Marko Rytkonen

Advisor, Software Testing Leadership

BIO

Marko began his long and wide testing career in 1994. Over the past three decades, he 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 multi million Euro 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 coach his clients to lead and improve testing practices at an organizational level.

Today, he works as a QA Coach at Hidden Trail, and also delivers advisory services, training sessions and talks through 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.

Talk (Advanced):

Taking action to lead software testing

In the evolving software development landscape, effective testing leadership has become the

key to delivering high-quality products. However, many organizations struggle with

challenges: misunderstood testers, testing not valued, insufficient testing resources, and

ineffective testing practices. In simple terms: testing is not lead. This talk revolutionizes your

approach to software testing leadership, empowering you to drive meaningful change within

your organization.

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.

● Add testing to everything you do so that testing is not a separate function, phase, or

process. Lead it as a holistic effort.

● Context: Understand your context and lead testing accordingly. There is not just one

correct way to test or lead.

● Transparency: Demand and create visibility into testing, regardless of whether testing

is outsourced or not. The better the visibility, the better it can be led.

● 2: Ensure that both humans and test automation test your software. Humans are

good at exploring the software, and test automation is good at checking the software -

both are needed.

● Learn: Learn to test and test to learn. Use learning to improve testing and test

leadership. Learn also to improve the software being tested and the business.

● Enable: Enable good quality testing by creating a quality culture where the

importance of testing and quality is understood. Boost the culture via your daily work

and the decisions you make.

● Adapt: Adapt testing to risks. Focus testing on high-risk areas and mitigate risks by

testing those areas first.

● Diverse: Ensure that testing is diverse. The more diverse testing you have, the more

diverse information you will get. 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.

You can transform your software testing leadership approach. By applying the principles

shared in this talk, you can drive improvements in your organization's testing practices and

software quality, reflecting positively on your organization’s business. You’ll be ready to

implement, or help leadership to implement, these principles at all leadership levels of your

organization.

Key Takeaways :

● Leadership must take the necessary actions to lead software testing and cannot

delegate it.

● Leadership can use our eight-step principles to focus on test leadership at

organizational, operational, and individual levels.

● All levels of leadership should be supported to lead testing efficiently.

Workshop:

How to lead testing at the organizational level?

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 three 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.

Each participant gets an ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook as an e-book.

Outline :

What is testing leadership

Heuristics for testing leadership, including brief exercises
Organizational and operational levels of testing leadership
Lunch break
Exercises: Create an organizational-level testing policy
Exercise: Plan contractual requirements for testing when testing is outsourced
Exercise: Create an organizational-level strategy or guidelines