That takes tests that run fast and fail only when something is actually broken. I show your team how to write them: in training courses, in your own code and in reviews.
I started writing PHPUnit in 2000 and still develop it today. A new major version comes out every February.
I co-founded thePHP.cc, helped start the PHP Foundation and serve on its board. I have also represented the interests of Open Source at the European Commission.
In consulting and reviews, I work with teams on their own code. That is where it shows why tests are missing or why nobody trusts them.
About half of the teams I work with start with a training course, the other half with consulting and coaching on their own code. Which fits depends on what your team needs.
Every course is also available for your team alone, online or on site. Public dates are run by the thePHP.cc Academy, also as part of its education flat rate.
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A small e-commerce team had no tests for its code: the business logic lived in the framework, and everything talked to the database directly. We started by pinning down in tests what the code actually did; the team wrote them, I guided. Within a few weeks, a release no longer needed a day of manual checking.
I take on architecture, legacy modernisation and larger consulting projects together with Stefan Priebsch. The thePHP.cc website gives an overview.
Explore consulting & coachingFrom training courses and consulting projects
“Crucial for the further development of our business in the coming years”
“The energy in the workshops was incredibly impressive. The positive feedback from my team confirmed that the effort was a complete success.”
“Sebastian and Stefan have shown us how our developers can keep delivering business value without getting sidetracked by our legacy code, and they have set us on track to reach a lot more common grounds between all our development teams.”
“Sebastian helped us both through reviews of our codebase and through training for our team. New employees were able to transfer their skills to PHPUnit in no time.”
“We had the pleasure of working with Sebastian to train our teams. He did excellent work and we will certainly use his services again in the future.”
“Identified the weaknesses of the existing software with precision”
I write down what I learn from working on PHPUnit and with teams.
A few lines in PHPUnit's Test Runner had no effect after April 2023. For three and a half years I reformatted them, renamed things in them and hardened them for static analysis anyway. PHPStan 2.3 found them, and even then only some of them.
Whoever upgrades in February is done by the afternoon. Whoever is three majors behind needs a project for it. The difference is not the upgrade but the year before it: the order you work in, and which of PHPUnit's two deprecation lists you read along the way.
The PHP releases of 21 October 2026 fix two critical vulnerabilities, and you should update now. The PHP Foundation itself calls the time the fix took a structural failure, one that was also caused by a lack of resources. The hate now being poured over PHP changes nothing about that; broader funding would.
Material and recordings from conferences and events
Get onto PHPUnit 13 cleanly, get ahead of PHPUnit 14, and get more out of the tests you write every day.
More information: Surviving and Thriving with PHPUnit 13LLM-based tools make it easy to go fast, and just as easy to go fast in the wrong direction. Teams do not move faster despite their quality controls. They move faster because they can trust them.
More information: Speed is a byproduct of trustDiscover the lessons and surprises from 25 years of developing PHPUnit.
More information: Past, Present, Future: The PHPUnit StoryYou can meet me next at these events
On and , I will be in Munich at the International PHP Conference. There I will give the presentations “Surviving and Thriving with PHPUnit 13” and “Supply Chain Security in the PHP Ecosystem”. I will also participate in the panel “PHP2Shell, Unpacked”.
More information: International PHP Conference Arrange a meeting: International PHP ConferenceOn , I will be in Frankfurt am Main at the PIMCORE Community Dev Days. There I will give the presentation “Speed is a byproduct of trust”.
More information: PIMCORE Community Dev Days Arrange a meeting: PIMCORE Community Dev DaysIn the free 30-minute call, we work out whether a training course, consulting or a review fits your team.