When the clock starts running out, QA stops behaving like a checklist and starts behaving like a question. You can’t test everything. So what do you test? Most of us were taught to begin at the top of a list and work down. But the list is someone else’s imagination, written before this release existed. Under pressure, the more honest move is quieter: sit with the work for a moment, and ask what would hurt the most if it broke. Then begin there. Coverage is a luxury. Care is the job.

Last sprint, we shipped a small billing change. The instinct was to run our usual checkout regression top to bottom. Instead, I closed the test plan for five minutes and asked the question: if one thing in this release broke and reached a customer, what would it be? The answer wasn't checkout. It was the proration math on mid-cycle upgrades — quiet, invisible, and exactly the kind of thing a support ticket would surface three days later. We spent the first hour there. The rest of the plan fits around it.

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Until next time,
Tina
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