Davide Messia
ABOUT ME:
My name is Davide Messia. I discovered software testing in 2007, and it has held my curiosity ever since. Over the years, I have worked as a tester, test analyst, and test manager. Today, as a Test Team Leader, I lead a team of 15 people working across different projects, combining test planning and project oversight with coaching and mentoring.
I believe quality is built through collaboration, not checked only at the end of a project. I try to involve testing early, listen to the people closest to the work, and make risks and dependencies visible so teams can address them before they become problems. I also enjoy sharing what I learn, from books and articles to practical experiences from testing projects.
Community is an important part of my life beyond work. I have been an active member of the international Joomla community for many years. In 2017, I founded L’Oracolo del Test, an Italian community that continues to organize meetups on quality and software testing, bringing together people with different interests and areas of expertise.
I am curious about how our profession is changing, and I keep looking for opportunities to learn from others and exchange perspectives. I enjoy connecting people who might not otherwise meet and creating spaces where they can learn from one another.
WHY QUALITY? In 2 paragraphs give us an overview of your philosophy on Quality and how you approach testing in support of achieving quality outcomes… Please provide (non-confidential) real world examples:
Quality is not an additional feature of a product, nor is it something to be checked only at the end: it is the fundamental pillar on which everything should be built, as well as the result of how all its parts work together to create value for the customer. We may have the finest ingredients, the most suitable tools, and highly competent people, but if they are not aligned with one another, the final result may still fall short. It is like having the finest Black Angus beef, the perfect wood for a barbecue, and a Michelin-starred chef—if the chef specializes in pasta, the steak may still arrive at the customer’s table burnt. To me, delivering quality means creating the conditions for skills, processes, and people to work together effectively, continuously learn, and contribute to providing a consistent and valuable customer experience.
To prevent that kind of outcome, I maintain an ongoing dialogue with project stakeholders and involve testing from the earliest stages by participating in working sessions during the planning phase. I believe that many issues can be prevented before test execution begins, provided that objectives, constraints, dependencies, and the potential impact of different activities are understood early enough. In my role as test team lead, with team members working across different projects, I regularly listen to the team and maintain an up-to-date view of project plans, deadlines, and ongoing activities. This allows me to identify potential overlaps or conflicts; for example, the release of an initial version of Project X could affect the stability of a shared environment and compromise the activities or timelines of Project Y. Through regular Excel reports and monitoring dashboards, I make these dependencies visible to stakeholders and support timely decisions regarding priorities, planning, and resource allocation. In this way, testing does not merely identify defects at the end of the process, but also helps prevent issues, reduce risks, and achieve more reliable quality outcomes.
This board role will require 10 - 20 hours per month of often self driven activities and the ideal candidate is someone who is willing to own an initiative and drive it through to completion... Is this something you are willing to commit to, and in your most honest moment, what will keep you motivated when the work gets hard and progress feels slow?
Yes. I am willing to commit 10–20 hours per month and to take ownership of an initiative through to completion. I am used to taking responsibility beyond my formal role, and my experience as test team lead and organizing “L’Oracolo del Test” has taught me the importance of ownership, persistence, and follow-through. What would keep me motivated when progress becomes slow is the opportunity to help people, strengthen the testing community, and turn ideas into something useful. I know that community initiatives do not always produce immediate results, so I would maintain momentum by breaking the work into achievable steps, communicating openly, and staying focused on the value the initiative can create for others.
It's 2030. AST just won 'Global Nonprofit of the Year' for transforming testing careers worldwide. What three bold moves did we make between 2025-2030 that nobody saw coming?
Follow-up: Which of these moves would you personally champion, and how would you convince skeptics on the board?
If AST won “Global Nonprofit of the Year” in 2030 for transforming testing careers worldwide, I hope it would be because we made three moves that changed who gets to shape the testing profession.
First, we would have put AST in the hands of local communities. Rather than organizing every activity centrally, AST would have given members a simple way to start their own local testing groups, connect them with groups in other countries, and share what they learned. A conversation in one city could inspire an experiment in another. AST’s role would be to provide support and a global connection, while local members decided what their communities needed.
Second, we would have turned career support into a cycle of giving back. Testers, wherever they lived or whatever resources they had, could find peers and mentors to help them grow. As they gained experience, they would be invited to support someone else—through a conversation, a CV review, a practical workshop, or simply by sharing what had and had not worked for them. The result would be more than a collection of resources: it would be a community helping people build sustainable careers.
Third, we would have made AST a place where the profession experiments in public. Instead of only discussing changes such as AI, members from testing and other disciplines would work together on real challenges and share the results openly—including failures. That would help testers evaluate new approaches critically and learn from evidence rather than hype.
I would personally champion the network of local communities. Founding and continuing to organize L’Oracolo del Test has shown me how much can begin when people have a place to meet, exchange ideas, and take ownership. To persuade skeptical Board members, I would start with a time-limited pilot in a few cities, with a modest budget and clear responsibilities. I would look beyond attendance to see whether people return, volunteer, start initiatives of their own, and build connections with other groups. We could then decide together what to improve, scale, or stop. That makes the ambition bold, but the first commitment manageable.
What's one thing AST is doing right now that we should stop doing immediately, even if it's popular? And what's one bold experiment we should try, even if it might fail spectacularly?
One thing I would stop immediately is making members work too hard to discover AST’s initiatives through the main website. As someone who has only recently become involved with AST, I may not have the full picture, but I have found that its many activities and opportunities are not always easy to discover or connect—from Caffeinated Quality sessions to community and career-related resources. I would not stop any of these initiatives. Instead, I would rethink how they are presented, making the website easier to navigate and helping members see what is available and how they can get involved.
As a bold experiment, I would propose organizing in-person AST meetups in different cities, with the events connected remotely. This would allow local communities to meet face to face while sharing ideas and experiences with people from other countries at the same time. We are becoming increasingly accustomed to participating in virtual activities, which are valuable because they make participation more accessible, but some conversations emerge more spontaneously in person—perhaps over pizza, while discussing an experiment, a real-world problem, or an idea worth exploring further. The experiment might fail because of costs, coordination challenges, or uneven participation, but it could also create deeper connections, inspire new local initiatives, and strengthen members’ sense of belonging to the community.
What is your history with AST? Describe why you are interested in serving on the AST Board and what personal / professional strengths make you an ideal board member for the organization?
Follow Up: Are there any particular initiatives or areas you are especially interested in driving / leading?
I recently became involved with AST by attending the Caffeinated Quality sessions. At a time of rapid transformation in our field, also driven by the growing adoption of artificial intelligence, I found it particularly valuable to engage with different perspectives and with an international community focused on critical thinking and the practice of software testing.
I am interested in joining AST’s Board of Directors because I would like to contribute the energy, experience, and skills I have developed through years of participation and leadership in different communities. For many years, I have been an active member of the international Joomla community, and in 2017 I founded “L’Oracolo del Test,” an Italian community that is still active and organizes regular meetups focused on quality and testing. These experiences have helped me develop strong listening, organizational, communication, and collaboration skills, working with people from different backgrounds and levels of experience. Professionally, I would also bring my experience in team leadership, project governance, and test management. I believe that the combination of my practical experience, leadership skills, and commitment to community building would allow me to make a meaningful contribution to AST’s growth by encouraging participation, knowledge sharing, and dialogue among testing professionals internationally.
I would be especially interested in helping members discover and access AST’s opportunities more easily, and in strengthening the connections between local testing communities and AST’s international network. Drawing on my experience organizing L’Oracolo del Test meetups, I would like to pilot initiatives that bring testers together locally while connecting them to the wider AST community.
When you step down from this board, what do you want your Wikipedia entry to say about your contribution to AST and the testing profession? What impact are you personally committed to creating?
I would like my time on the Board to be remembered as the contribution of someone who helped AST transform mere participation into active engagement. Having founded and actively maintained “L’Oracolo del Test,” I know how much a community can grow when people do not simply watch from the sidelines but share experiences, organize initiatives, and help others get involved.
The impact I aim to make is to help make AST more accessible, visible, and connected—building bridges between local and international communities and helping members turn ideas into concrete initiatives. By the end of my term, I would like more people to feel like active participants in the testing profession and to have found opportunities to learn, contribute, and support the growth of others. If I could leave behind a community that is more engaged, collaborative, and capable of generating new initiatives, that would be the most important achievement for me.
You're on a board committee with members from Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, Germany, and the US. The group is stuck on a decision because cultural communication styles are clashing and creating misunderstandings. What is your strategy for facilitating breakthrough and building genuine consensus?
Follow-up: Provide an example of how you've successfully worked across significant cultural or professional differences.
My first step would be to slow the conversation down and make sure everyone understands the decision we need to make. I would agree on a few simple ground rules: give each person space to speak, ask for clarification rather than assume intent, and allow people to share their thoughts in writing if that helps them express themselves more clearly. I would ask each member to explain their preferred option, what concerns them about the alternatives, and what they would need to support a decision. I would then summarize what I heard and check that I had understood each person correctly. This helps move the discussion away from communication styles and toward the actual points of agreement and disagreement.
Next, I would ask the group to assess the options against shared criteria, such as impact on AST members, feasibility, resources, and risk. If views remained far apart, I would ask people to assess the options individually first, then discuss the reasons behind their different assessments. We could adjust the proposal to address the most important concerns and check whether everyone could support it, even if it was not everyone’s first choice. I would document the decision, any remaining reservations, and the next steps. For me, genuine consensus means that people have been heard, understand the reasoning, and are willing to move forward together—not that every difference has disappeared.
An example from my work involves professional rather than cultural differences. When several projects compete for the same team capacity, project owners may each have valid but conflicting priorities. In one such situation, I spoke with the project owners to understand their deadlines and concerns, then worked with the team to assess the effort involved and identify which requests were quick to complete and which could block other work. I brought that information back to the stakeholders so we could discuss a realistic order of work and the effect of moving certain milestones. By making the constraints visible and giving people a chance to challenge the proposed plan, we were able to agree on a way forward.