Another addition to our meet the speakers series. Here we asked Kevin Harris to answer our questions so that you can learn more about him.

Kevin will have his track ‘Not making a drama out of a crisis: How we dealt with losing one third of our testers overnight‘ on Tuesday the 28th at 10:50 a.m.

How did you get Started in Software Testing?

My first company initiated a new project to replace their aging database system (10m customers, 200m transactions) and I was asked to take part in UAT for my (back-office) team. Instead of just reading the specs (200 pages in those days) for my area, I ended up reading and reviewing all the specs for all the departments, and was seconded to be the UAT Team Lead within a couple of months. Never went back…

Who Inspires You?

The person who has inspired me most over the last few years is Rob Lambert. Showed me that there was a testing community outside of the walls of the office, and that standing up and speaking in front of a crowd of strangers wasn’t the scariest thing in the world.  (Though it is a bit scary..!)

What do you see for the Future of Software Testing?

The future of software testing?  I think it will get more diverse – even in the office now we have testers in five or six different roles (specialising in functional testing, performance testing, security testing, test automation, test frameworks). For the standard ‘functional’ testing role, I think you’ll need to be a great communicator to thrive. Overall, I don’t think the role will disappear, or you’re have to learn to code, as often gets discussed, but you will need to be flexible and willing to explore new ways of working.