In this interview, Hilary Weaver-Robb, a software quality architect at Quicken Loans, explains how you can create a company culture that encourages trying new things—even if they fail. She discusses the importance of learning, changing roles as you grow, and testing RESTful web services.

Each of us has personal weaknesses that are often perceived to have negative impacts on performance and capability in the workplace. When this weakness is prominent to yourself or others, are you capable of benefiting IT teams and qualified to do the job? In dealing with negative impacts of her Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Julene Johnson falls into this category and has experienced personal doubt in her ability to perform her job well. Over time, however, she’s noticed that habits and techniques developed while dealing with anxiety can be applied in a manner that improves her life and her career and gives confidence to others in her capabilities. Similarly, skills and abilities gained while working as a tester have helped her build successful patterns in her life to help her manage anxiety more effectively.

If you want to have a successful career in testing—and maybe even get beyond the day-to-day at the individual level, and improve the team or division—all you need to do is things no one else can. That means staying ahead as the industry moves on, which takes an intense and continuous investment in learning and practicing new things. Here are some suggestions for what that could look like.

In this interview, Geoff Meyer, a test architect in the Dell EMC infrastructure solutions group, discusses whether or not testers should be nervous about artificial intelligence, what testers can do right now to keep up with the times, and when AI is most useful for software teams.