Who is Gitte Ottosen?

Expert test consultant/co owner

Gitte Ottosen is a test manager and quality coach with a strong focus on a value driven approach to software development. She has 30 years of experience in IT, primarily within test, test management and process improvement, in both traditional and agile contexts. She is focusing on supporting a quality mindset across teams and organizations in Denmark. As a self-confessed test and agile evangelist who preaches the need for a strong quality and value driven focus, Gitte is a strong advocate for a context-driven approach, a role requiring profound professional insight, passion, and persistence—qualities that she holds in abundance. Gitte is a dedicated trainer within the areas of agile and test and is a regular speaker at international conferences. She is a trained Master coach, and also holds several certificates within testing as well as agile: ISTQB Expert Level Test Management – Full, Certified agile tester (CAT), TMap Test Engineer, TMAP Organizing Built-in Quality at Scale, Certified SCRUM Master, SAFe Program Consultant

What will Gitte Ottosen be discussing?

Quality coaching – a true Swiss army knife

The first principle of agile is to deliver value to our customers, but how do we ensure that we as a team have the quality focus as well as the skills needed to have a continuous focus on this? How do we ensure that the team have not only development skills but also quality engineering skills integrated in there way of working. Quality engineering goes further than “just” testing, focusing on building quality in through the entire lifecycle, from the identification of needs in the business to the delivery of the solution in production. But often the agile team is lacking the necessary skillset to support this, even more so since we see many agile teams that are lacking the QA role within. So how can we support the team in engaging in the quality engineering mindset in that context? How can we help? Over the last couple of years a new role is emerging within the realms of quality – the quality coach. Ann Marie Charette defines the role as: A quality coach guides, supports and rally a team to collectively own and improve quality through facilitation, education, experimentation and visualisation. They are a passionate advocate for quality. But what value can a role like that add to an agile team – or across several teams working on a combined solution? The agile coach focuses on building a quality culture within the team, accessing the current quality maturity and support the team in growing their test and quality skillset in their daily work. But also across the teams, focusing on advocating for quality, supporting both management and business in understanding what is needed to deliver a quality solution in the end. In this presentation I will dive into the role, discussing the different skills needed, as well as how this role can add contribute the helping the agile team moving towards that very first principle of agile.