Mike Jarred
Cornflower Technology Consulting (UK)

Biography

I am an experienced technologist & career tester who has been in IT roles since 1987. I have had an interesting and varied career which has enabled me to work as a Head of Testing and Development in Financial Services and Life Sciences, and other business domains. I am the Director of Cornflower Technology Consulting, where I deliver strategic advice and services to clients on how to deliver great quality software, and ensure they get maximum value from their investments in Testing and Quality Engineering. I love helping people with their personal and professional development, so it is really exciting for me to be the Programme Chair for HUSTEF this year.
KEYNOTE SPEECH: Stakeholder Management is a Testing superpower!

Testing needs stakeholders; without stakeholders, we have no mandate or requirement to do testing. In turn, Stakeholders need information from testers to make effective business decisions. Testers are in the information provision business; If this information is delivered in time, in the right format, and it helps stakeholder decision making, then testing is often seen as a value-add activity in projects and the broader organisation. However, achieving good engagement and communication with stakeholders is hard, and often not successfully planned or managed, leading to stakeholder dissatisfaction and testers not being valued, despite the effort expended in delivering testing scope.

Join Mike in this keynote where he will share his journey of identifying and engaging with stakeholders, and how he has learned the hard way, the importance of good planning, communication, and engagement with key stakeholder groups. Mike will share stories of poor stakeholder engagement and explore the damaging impact that had on the reputation of testing, and what we can all do to increase our value in our organisations.

In this talk Mike will share examples and ideas to bring the following topics to life…

  • Why are stakeholders important?
  • What is the impact of poor stakeholder engagement?
  • What are the problems with perception, and why is there a disconnect from reality?
  • What prevents good stakeholder engagement?
  • How to undertake stakeholder identification, and how to effectively communicate
    with them
  • Why we should care about different stakeholder groups
  • Why it is important to explain benefits of testing over features of testing
  • How data can be used to remove subjectivity and opinion