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EuroSTAR Conference

Europe's Largest Quality Engineering Conference

Track Talk W10

Taking action to lead software testing

Kari Kakkonen

Marko Rytkönen

15:00 - 15:45 CEST Wednesday 4th June

In the evolving landscape of software development, effective testing leadership has become the key to delivering high-quality products. However, many organisations struggle with challenges: misunderstood testers, testing not valued, insufficient testing resources, and ineffective testing practices. This talk revolutionises your approach to software testing leadership, empowering you to drive meaningful change within your organisation.

Drawing from our extensive experience spanning six decades of leadership, mentoring, and testing, and distilled wisdom from our book “ACT 2 LEAD – Software Testing Leadership Handbook,” we will unveil the critical actions that leaders at all levels, including you, must take to elevate software testing from a siloed activity to a company-wide strategic initiative.

We’ll go through eight principles. We’ll explore how to add testing into all software development actions, how to choose the right testing based on context, how to create visibility for quality of testing practices and test results, and how to strike the perfect balance between automated testing and human-driven exploration. Then talk about learning as a way to improve, enabling a culture of quality and continuous improvement, aligning testing efforts with product risks, and implementing diverse testing approaches for finding diverse sets of defects and observations.

Testing leadership empowers everyone doing testing, significantly improves product quality and customer satisfaction, reduces production defects and associated costs, and accelerates delivery cycles without compromising on quality.

You can transform your software testing leadership approach. By applying the principles shared in this talk, you can drive improvements in your organisation’s testing practices and software quality, reflecting positively on your organisation’s business. You’ll be ready to implement these principles at all leadership levels of your organisation.

The talk can also be extended to a deep dive, half-day or full-day workshop where the participants build a company-level test strategy using the test leadership heuristics learned during the talk.

What you will learn

  1. Leadership must take needed actions to lead software testing and they cannot delegate them.
  2. Leadership can use our eight step principles to get focus on test leadership at organizational, operational, and individual levels.
  3. All levels of leadership should be supported to lead testing efficiently.

Session Details

  • Intermediate
  • 45 minutes
  • Includes 15 mins Q&A
  • Leading/mentoring people
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Check out this video from Kari Kakkonen to hear more about this talk, ‘Taking action to lead software testing’.

We look forward to welcoming you to EuroSTAR 2025.

Session Speaker

Kari Kakkonen

Kari Kakkonen

Gofore Verify Oy, Finland

Mr. Kari Kakkonen has worked in testing for almost 30 years. He has EuroSTAR Testing Excellence, Tester of the Year, and DASA Exemplary DevOps Instructor Awards. He authored Dragons Out software testing book. He trains at Gofore Verify Oy.  Kari volunteers at ISTQB, TMMi, and FiSTB.

Kari and Marko are co-authors of ‘ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook’.

Marko-Rytkonen

Marko Rytkönen

Hidden Trail Oy, Finland

Mr. Marko Rytkönen works as a QA Coach for Hidden Trail. He specializes in helping with test leadership and actively shares his thoughts via public talks and trainings. He has worked for 30+ years in testing and QA in different roles.

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