Breakpoint 2026 is back from 12–15 May, fully virtual and free, and it’s shaping up to be one of those editions where you actually want to show up for the sessions, not just bookmark them.
We’re kicking off our speaker spotlight series with someone who’s seen the industry evolve from the inside: Lena Nyström, CEO of Test Scouts AB. She’s been building software since 1999, starting out as a developer before moving into testing, which gives her a perspective that’s both technical and deeply practical.
At Breakpoint this year, she’s diving into something most teams underestimate: system messages. The kind you see every day — errors, warnings, popups — that seem simple on the surface but are surprisingly hard to get right. And more importantly, what those messages reveal about how systems are actually built.
You've been building software since 1999 and moved from QA to CEO of Test Scouts AB. How has your definition of "quality" evolved?
I actually started as a developer and did that for a decade before moving into testing. And to be honest, I don't think it's changed much.
I've always been very interested in quality from requirement creation to working in production — that's just how I was schooled. It likely shaped how I've worked with software in all of my roles and is also the foundation to why I always struggled to understand why other people saw testing as something limiting and small.
For me, quality starts with the idea and ends when software is decommissioned. The code is just a tiny part :-)
Can you give us a sneak peek into your Breakpoint session? What's the core message you want to deliver?
I will talk about something I find absolutely fascinating: how incredibly difficult it is to write clear, understandable messages of different kinds. Error messages, information messages, warnings, popups.
And it LOOKS so simple, and is so funny when it goes wrong. Not to mention the fascinating differences we can see historically and how much you can learn about architecture and systems by studying them.
Most teams treat system messages as an afterthought. But they’re often the first place users experience failure — and the only clue teams have when something breaks.
What's a belief about sustainable technological infrastructure you've shifted your perspective on?
I am terribly sorry but again, I am not sure much HAS shifted. Maybe five to ten years ago I believed I was terribly outdated and that I moved too far away from deep tech to be relevant — but the more I see and hear, the clearer it is to me that while everything changes, everything stays the same.
Old ideas resurface and the core just... stays relevant.
After navigating the tech industry for over two decades, what's your approach to long-term burnout prevention and work-life balance?
I hope I have an answer to this before I retire but to be honest — I am terrible at this. I give way too much of myself and work is too much of my identity.
Lena is one of several leaders joining us at Breakpoint 2026 this May. If there’s a common thread across the sessions this year, it’s this: the way we think about quality is changing — but the fundamentals still matter more than we’d like to admit. Sometimes, it’s the smallest things — like a system message — that tell you the most.
