James Lyndsay is a test strategist, based in London. He's been testing since 1986, and has worked independently since setting up Workroom Productions in 1994. As a consultant, he's worked in a variety of businesses and project styles; from retail to telecommunications, from rapidly-evolving internet start-ups to more traditional large-scale enterprise. He's worked to technical requirements for companies that make and sell software, to commercial requirements for companies that buy and use software, and to unexpected requirements everywhere. James was an internal irritant to the ISEB exam process for five years, is a regular speaker and occasional teacher, runs LEWT (the London Exploratory Workshop in Testing) and has won prizes for his papers.

It is hard to find a practical approach that allows a professional tester to achieve their full potential in an agile environment. Typical agile practices have characteristic effects on the work of a tester - and the expectations of experienced testers can be at odds with those of other experienced members in an agile team. How can a tester fit into an agile team and offer the best of his or her skills and insight? How does one make - or become - an 'agile tester'?

Using real-life examples, this talk attempts to give a flavour of what it is like to bring a test perspective into an agile project - and what it is like to be on an agile project that has a sudden need for testing skills. The talk will help testers recognise where they are bringing friction to an agile environment, help agile team members recognise where they may be incurring a 'testing debt' and identifies ways that testers can facilitate learning and bring value to an agile project.

Susan Windsor is the Managing Director of WMHL Consulting Ltd. in the UK, which specialises in the delivery of strategic testing consulting services. Susan is also Director of Aqastra, which has a focus on retraining business administration staff to become acceptance testers. Until recently, she was also non-exec Chair for Insight Test Services who have offices in Dublin, Galway and the UK and still provides Insight with advisor support. Prior to setting up WMHL, Susan managed the Testing Service business for IBM, delivering software testing within the multinational's business consulting services. Susan has also spoken at many industry conferences in the past, including EuroSTAR in 2005, where she was a keynote speaker.

Although the existing certification schemes (ISEB/ISTQB, CSQE etc.) go some way to providing a measure of a tester's knowledge, their highly detailed syllabuses give no measure as to their competence or experience.

Examinations tend to be multiple choice and 'correct' answers are derived from what is written in the syllabus. As a consequence, questions and answers in these exams can't take much account of context or the experience of the candidate. To many people, this implies the schemes and certificates awarded are practically useless. Because the syllabuses are so highly detailed, courses become a commodity, focused on exam passing. Competition in the training marketplace is based on cost and volumes rather than the quality of training.

Unless our industry provides the next step in provision of meaningful qualifications to accurately reflect experience and competence, those who recruit and manage testing staff will continue to depend on inadequate knowledge-based qualifications.

This session suggests that there is increasing demand for training and certification schemes that are based more on competence, rather than memory. What would such schemes look like? We've got some ideas, but we seek your input.

We'll provide a suggested framework that may help structure the measurement of competencies for different roles within testing and some ideas on how this measurement could take place. But wouldn't it be great to move this forward to a scheme that really benefits individuals and our industry?

Work with us in this session and maybe we can identify some of you who would like to get more deeply involved to take this to the next level.