1. Hear how we overcame our barriers by moving from a formal governance process to a supportive assurance mechanism, and how the adoption of skills development models is supporting our journey to DevOps.

Paul Collis is the Test Delivery Manager at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), heading up their testing group and responsible for the delivery & governance of testing across all IT change projects. Paul has been at the FCA over 4 years and has overseen testing of 2 major transition programmes. Paul has previously co-presented at the Test Management Forum, and recently co-presented at the QA&Test2016 International conference in Bilbao. Outside of work, Paul has 2 grown-up children (both teachers) and is a lifelong Crystal Palace supporter.

A year ago testing wasn’t as valued as it needed to be by our stakeholders; at the same time we were embarking upon lots of new changes to how we wanted to deliver software changes.

There were three specific barriers preventing us moving forward
· There was a barrier to confidence of testing in our stakeholder groups, this manifested itself in
o late challenge in projects from stakeholders regarding test approaches, and
o delays to project delivery and rework in testing
· There was a barrier to collaboration, this was due to a transactional relationship with our suppliers leading to a lack of trust
· There was a barrier to adoption of Agile practices and DevOps, this was in part due to
o A lack of skill in the team,
o A lack of appropriate roles, the Test Management role needed to change to one of Quality Advocacy, and
o No frameworks in place to support the cultural change required

Hear how we overcame our barriers by moving from a formal governance process to a supportive assurance mechanism, and how the adoption of skills development models is supporting our journey to DevOps.