Steve Watson
Senior Test Manager
Octopus Labs

Steve is an experienced Testing professional, having worked across a variety of different industries including Banking, Trading, Vehicle Leasing, Automotive Information and B2B data solutions.

He is currently the Senior Test Manager for Octopus Labs, managing a team of 11 testers who cover a range of financial products within an Agile framework.

Testing is something that he enjoys blogging about (www.stevethedoc.wordpress.com), as well as speaking at conferences, helping as a mentor at the Software Testing Clinic, and writing the odd magazine article.

When he is not testing, you’ll find him presenting a bi-weekly radio show on a local community FM station.

Help! I want to be a better tester, but I don’t know what to do…

It’s difficult to know what areas to focus on if you want to be the best tester you can be. Should you learn performance testing? Or what about learning a coding language (or two?) Should you get involved in DevOps and deployments? The list is endless, and if you ask 50 people, you’ll get 50 answers.

In this session, we’ll take a look at the skills that testers believe they need, and the skills that job ad’s ask for – you’ll be surprised at the results! Then we’ll investigate the 3 core skill areas that testers need to focus on based on Steve’s extensive experience as a test manager, and help you decide where best to invest your time.