Meet the Instructors

Mark Winteringham is a tester, toolsmith and automation specialist with over 10 years experience providing testing expertise on award-winning projects across a wide range of technology sectors including BBC, Barclays, UK Government and Thomson Reuters. He is an advocate for modern risk-based testing practices and trains teams in Automation in Testing, Behaviour Driven Development and Exploratory testing techniques. He is also the co-founder of Software Testing Clinic a community raising awareness of careers in testing and improving testing education.

Richard Bradshaw is an experienced tester, consultant, trainer and generally a friendly guy. He shares his passion for testing through consulting, training and giving presentations on a variety of topics relating to testing. With over 12 years of testing experience, he has a lot of insights in the world of testing and software development.
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Richard is currently the BossBoss at the Ministry of Testing, co-creator of the Automation in Testing (AiT) namespace, blogs at https://automationintesting.com and https://thefreindlytester.co.uk. Tweeting over at @FriendlyTester and also the creator of the YouTube channel Whiteboard Testing.

Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve. In 2006, he became co-author (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing (RST), a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure.  Since then, he has flown over a million miles to teach RST in 35 countries on six continents.

Michael has 25 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For the last 18 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams both in-house and around the world.

I started my career as a programmer, and over the years I’ve worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant and manager. From all these perspectives, one thing became clear: our level of individual, team and company success was deeply impacted by our work environment and organizational dynamics. As a result, I have spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success.

I’ve written over 100 articles and co-authored two books–Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. I write about management, leadership, collaboration, organizations and change (or another topic I’m currently exploring).

I’m an original founder of the Scrum Alliance and the AYE Conference, and I have served two terms on the Board of Directors for the Agile Alliance.

Michael Palotas is a co-founder of Element34 Solutions GmbH. He specializes in agile engineering practices, testing methods, and test automation with open source tools.

After holding senior positions in Europe and North America at Ericsson, Nortel Networks, and Intel, Michael Palotas was responsible for software quality as Head of Quality Engineering at eBay International for over ten years. He played a key role in shaping eBay's agile transformation and transferring Wasserfall's software development into a highly agile organization. Mr. Palotas also played a vital role in the development of Selenium Grid, which is an integral part of the Selenium toolset and represents the standard for automating web and mobile applications. He is a recognized expert in the field of test engineering and is a regular guest speaker at conferences around the world.

James Bach is founder and principal consultant of Satisfice, Inc., a software testing consultancy. After a little while as a video game programmer, he joined Apple in 1987 and spent the next decade or so as a tester and test manager in Silicon Valley. Since then — and since 1999, running Satisfice, Inc. — he has traveled the world teaching rapid software testing skills and occasionally serving as an expert witness on court cases involving software testing. James is the author of Lessons Learned in Software Testing and Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success.

My experience across a variety of industries, from small startups to Fortune 50 organizations, provides a solid platform for assisting clients through their transition to Agile development practices. I incorporate my study of communication, personality types, team styles, systems thinking, and human systems dynamics into my work and writing. You can find a number of my articles published at Better Software magazine and StickyMinds.com.

I frequently speak at local and regional conferences as well as Agile Development Practices and the Agile 201x Conferences.

Daniel Billing is an experienced software tester, consultant, and trainer. He has a deep passion for testing, and especially security. He is an active member of the software testing community, participating in a number of conferences and other events, as an attendee, speaker, trainee, and volunteer.

With 18 years of experience, Daniel has worked with a wide range of organizations, including start-ups, financial institutions, health and scientific, public, and the defense sectors. He currently runs the consultancy The Test Doctor, which aims to develop test strategies and skills of his cents, particularly in the sphere of security.

Robert Sabourin, P.Eng. has more than 36 years management experience leading teams of software development professionals to consistently deliver projects on-time, on-quality and on-budget.

As a respected member of the software engineering community, Robert has trained and mentored literally hundreds of top professionals in the field.

Robert is an Adjunct Professor of Software Engineering at McGill University who often speaks to conferences around the world on software engineering, Software Quality Assurance, testing and management issues.

Ilari Henrik Aegerter’s formal studies have brought him from General Linguistics and Sociology to Software Engineering and Software Testing. Coming from the medical software domain at Phonak AG and progressing to e-commerce at eBay. He is now the Managing Director of House of Test GmbH and he believes that there is still a lot of work to be done for excellent software testing. In 2013 he co-founded the International Society for Software Testing (ISST), which advocates for bringing back common sense to testing. In 2015 he was elected into the board of the Association for Software Testing (AST) where he acts as Vice President. He is also a lecturer at the HSR technical university for the post-graduate course CAS Software Testing.