Speed is a byproduct of trust

AI-assisted development tools promise unprecedented speed. But without proper foundations, velocity becomes recklessness: technical debt accumulates faster, architectural boundaries erode quicker, and defects ship sooner. The opposite failure mode is just as real: teams that insist on control without speed cannot meet modern market demands.

This session distills the essential lessons of a full-day workshop into 40 minutes: how to establish automated safety nets that let teams move faster precisely because they can trust their quality controls. Using PHP and industry-standard tooling as the running example, we trace how traditional quality practices such as automated testing, static analysis, and architectural boundary enforcement evolve in AI-assisted workflows, culminating in a test-driven pattern where humans write specifications as tests and AI agents generate implementations.

You will leave with clear criteria for evaluating your own quality infrastructure and a prioritized list of practices to adopt first. The central insight: the practices that make AI collaboration safe are the same practices that make human development fast. That convergence is the path to sustainable speed.

The first time I present "Speed is a byproduct of trust" will be at the Forum PHP on in Disneyland Paris.

About me

I am the creator and maintainer of PHPUnit, the de facto standard testing framework within the PHP ecosystem. Used by millions of developers, it is embedded in the build pipelines of start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, and public sector organisations alike. I serve on the board of the PHP Foundation and am a co-founder of thePHP.cc, where I advise organisations on testing strategy, software quality, and the responsible adoption of AI-assisted development workflows.

I have over 25 years of experience working with Open Source software, having contributed to the PHP language itself as well as the tools on which that ecosystem depends. Much of that work has been devoted to one goal: building the automated safety nets, from testing to static analysis, that allow teams to change software with confidence. AI-assisted development raises the stakes, but it does not change the fundamentals. The quality practices I have spent my career building and teaching are precisely what make it safe to go fast, and that conviction is at the heart of this presentation.

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