Kari Kakkonen & Marko Rytkönen

Mr. Kari Kakkonen has worked in software testing for 30 years and is ICT Influencer of the Year 2025 in Finland. He co-authored ‘ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook’. Kari is the 2021 EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award winner.

He is the CEO of Dragons Out Oy; created a fantasy book to teach software testing to children. Kari works at Gofore as the Service Owner of Customer Expertise Development, running a training business that provides software testing, agile, DevOps, and AI training services across Europe. Kari has volunteered in key roles at ISTQB, TMMi, and FiSTB. Kari is a seasoned speaker and passionate advocate for quality engineering and software testing.

In the evolving landscape of software development, effective testing leadership is key to delivering high-quality products. However, many organizations struggle with challenges: misunderstood testers, testing not valued, insufficient testing resources, and ineffective testing practices. 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.

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 organization’s testing practices and software quality, reflecting positively on your organization’s business. You’ll be ready to implement these principles at all leadership levels of your organization.