Julie is founder and Principal Consultant of QST Consultants Ltd. She has first hand experience in the roles of test analyst, test team leader, test consultant and test manager and her experience has been gained across a broad range of industries including financial, utilities, retail, insurance, construction and the public sector. At QST Consultants, she provides consultancy and training in all aspects of testing, specialising in risk-based testing, test management and people issues.

Julie is a regular contributor to Testing in the UK, is a marker for the ISEB Practitioner certification, she is a committee member for the British Computer Society’s Specialist Group in Software Testing and has been England’s country co-ordinator for the EuroSTAR conference for the past 3 years.

An enthusiastic and motivated presenter Julie has spoken at a number of software testing conferences including EuroSTAR, STAREast, ICSTest and the BCS SIGIST.

Testers are doing it for themselves…

This presentation concentrates on how every testing professional can move their career forward through personal investment. The session detail some of the skills and attributes needed to be a tester and based on personal experience, this presentation will give an understanding of the types of investment that can be made and ideas/suggestions to increase your knowledge and skills. The session will also give you ideas on what your test manager can do to increase skills and knowledge within the team, including long-term initiatives such as career paths as well as shorter-term (and cheap) quick wins. This includes hints and tips on how to help yourself, your organisation and the testing community as a whole!

5 points that the presentation will cover

·          Attributes needed to be a tester – are you ready to be a tester?

·          Why you should invest in your own career

·          Various forms of personal investment you can make

·          What your Company can do for you

·          How to make it happen – goal setting & creating action plans

Declan studied Telecommunications & Electronic Engineering at the Dublin Institute of Technology qualifying in 1977, later in his career he studied accountancy with the ACCA and completed an MBA at Dublin City University. Declan’s early career was focussed on Hardware Test Engineering test design and testing printed circuit boards, mini and micro computers with Computer Automation rising to manager of Test Engineering and Production Test. Following this Declan joined Trio Tech an independent semi-conductor test laboratory as engineering manager and set up a mil 883 test facility. Declan's involvement with software in the early years involved design and development of test code for hardware both functional and non functional. Declan than spent 14 years with Amdahl the mainframe computer supplier and held engineering and quality management positions in manufacturing, during his tenure with Amdahl he led a transition of the Irish based  operation from Manufacturing to a full IT services company, setting up software development, software test and infrastructure services business units (DMR Consulting Division, now Fujitsu Services). After this Declan became CEO of Accuris a JV between 3 telecommunication operators KPN, Telia and eircom, in this role Declan managed the company to profitability, developed and launched a lawful intercept software product and the SI division providing a range of OSS solutions such as provisioning, billing, mediation and WMS. Declan then set up Insight Test Services in 2003 and Insight software in 2005. Insight has grown to be Ireland’s largest and leading Software QA, Test and Services provider with a prestige selection of Blue Chip Clients Internationally.