Organizational testing leadership
Organizational testing leadership
Test leadership is required at organizational and operational levels in many organizations.
In this tutorial, we explain the fundamentals of test leadership and have practical exercises to understand it. We discuss what leadership means in different scenarios, where effective test leadership is needed, and where leadership is all too often missing.
Testing leadership is always needed, even if testing or development is subcontracted. Especially in any larger organization, organizational leadership is needed for testing, for example, to set the vision, harmonize testing across different teams, increase productivity, align testing activities, and support different management levels and teams doing the testing.
The tutorial utilizes the ACT2LEAD heuristic about software testing leadership. To understand it properly, the audience is divided into teams with brief exercises for each part of the heuristic. The ACT2LEAD heuristics consists of eight core practices of testing leadership.
We’ll go through eight principles in practice. We'll explore how to add testing into all software development actions (ACT), how to choose the right testing based on context (CONTEXT), how to create visibility for the quality of testing practices and test results (TRANSPARENCY), and how to strike the perfect balance between automated testing and human-driven exploration (2). Then we talk about learning as a way to improve (LEARN), enabling a culture of quality and continuous improvement (ENABLE), aligning testing efforts with product risks (ADAPT), and implementing diverse testing approaches for finding diverse sets of defects and observations (DIVERSE).
The tutorial includes several exercises set in the context of a large, imaginary corporation case study. In teams, participants create software testing leadership artifacts for the case study organization.
Each participant is encouraged to bring a laptop, although it is enough to have one laptop per four people. Internet access is needed, too.
For Whom
The event is intended for those interested in software testing and its management.
What It Offers
The event provides experiences and insights into leading software testing using the ACT 2 LEAD principle.
Pricing
Regular price: €1170,00 + VAT
Early Bird price: €990,00 + VAT, valid until July 31, 2025
TIVIA corporate member price: €890,00 + VAT
Language
The main language of tutorial is English. Finnish is the secondary language.
Our Experts
Kari Kakkonen
Mr. Kari Kakkonen has worked in software testing for almost 30 years. He is the co-author of ‘ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook’.
Kari is the 2021 EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award winner, Tester of the Year in Finland Award 2021 winner, and DASA Exemplary DevOps Instructor Award 2023 winner. He is the author and CEO of Dragons Out Oy, which created a fantasy book to teach software testing to children. Kari works at Gofore as Service Owner of Customer Expertise Development running a training business and provides software testing, agile, DevOps, and AI training services in Europe He has M.Sc. from Aalto University (aalto.fi). He works mostly with agile testing, lean, test automation, DevOps, and AI.
Kari has been working in ICT consulting, training, finance, insurance, pension insurance, public sector, embedded software, telecom, gaming, and industry domains.
Kari was on the Executive Committee of ISTQB (istqb.org) 2015-2021. He is on the Board of Directors of TMMi (tmmi.org). He is the Treasurer of FiSTB (fistb.fi). He is the co-founder of FiSTB Testing Assembly, the biggest testing seminar in Finland, for which he has been a co-organiser for 10 years.
Kari is a singer, snowboarder, kayaker, husband and dad.
Kari has given public talks and is a passionate advocate for software testing and QA. He is active on LinkedIn and welcomes you to network.
Marko Rytkönen
Over the past three decades, Marko has held various roles in the world of software testing - from testing, test management and leading testing in an organizational level to leading a global testing consultancy business. He has worked in global product companies with known brands, and also in consulting companies - covering big corporations and startups. His speciality is to help his clients to lead and improve testing practices at an organizational level.
Today, he works as a QA Coach at Hidden Trail, and also as an advisor and trainer at his own company Marko Rytkönen Oy.
Marko has made significant contributions to the testing community. He is the author of the 'ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook', available in both Finnish and English. He co-founded Testing Assembly, Finland’s biggest testing conference, which he has been organizing for over 10 years. He has done voluntary work also as a board member of Finnish Software Testing Board (FiSTB).
He remains an active thought leader, sharing his insights through talks and on LinkedIn. In 2024 alone, he delivered over 20 talks, e.g. for universities to inspire and educate the next generation of software testing professionals.
He welcomes you to network in Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markorytkonen/