Pascal Puchtler
An experienced QA engineer and software developer with a strong focus on Python-based testing and test automation. Specialized in breaking applications through exploratory, risk-driven, and destructive testing approaches. With several years of experience working on complex software systems, the focus is on uncovering hidden failure modes, improving test strategies, and helping teams build more resilient applications. Passionate about bridging the gap between QA and development by sharing practical insights into how and why software fails in real-world scenarios.
Session
Modern applications rarely fail in obvious ways. Instead, they break at the edges: unexpected inputs, race conditions, misused APIs, and assumptions nobody realized they were making. This talk presents ten practical and repeatable ways to intentionally break an application, using a QA mindset with a strong Python focus.
The session is designed to help QAs sharpen their investigative approach and move beyond happy-path testing, while giving developers concrete insight into where real-world failures often originate. Each “way to break an application” highlights a common risk area such as data handling, state management, timing, configuration, or integration boundaries.
Attendees will learn how to think more destructively (in a productive way), design better tests, and recognize fragile design decisions earlier. The goal is not to assign blame, but to improve collaboration and software quality by understanding how systems actually fail in practice.