My keynote at Agile Testing Day Netherdlands 2015. Challenging agile testing professionals to go beyond software and quality testing of products and to bring their skills to a far bigger and more urgent situation - their personal growth and Joy and the survival of their organisation as it searches for it's next business model.

1. Test Beyond Quality
Beyond Software
Agile Testing Day
Netherlands 2015
Mike Sutton

2. Mike
9
years as a
coach
150
+teams
coached
1500
+people
supported
Mike Sutton
Agile Coach and Improvement Partner
“I help technology organisations become more effective in
meeting their business goals by applying simple and effective
tools - that reduce risk, increase value and create knowledge -
and by nurturing a culture of open and joyful collaboration.
21
years as a
developer
Mentor agile teams and their
members
Helping teams develop
resilience and the tools to help
them self organise effectively
and own their working process
responsibly.
Advise management teams and
executives
Providing wide multi-industry and
multi-disciplinary experience and
expertise to help executives and
management teams develop
modern strategies
Coach organisational
effectiveness with everybody
Sharing a framework and
support to help the entire
organisation develop and sustain
continuous improvement and
effectiveness

3. I want to poke, provoke, tease and inspire.

4. “Work has an enormous impact
on my personal growth and
my overall Joy.
Show of hands, how many agree with this statement?

5. Every business is searching
For a repeatable business model, product-market
fit, next revenue ceiling, greater profit, next best-
thing-since-sliced-bread, great culture…
For survival

6. The search is complex
It is uncertain, risky and requires all of our skills
and passion - intelligently applied - to succeed

7. How does the
search impact…
Leaders and leadership
Roles and accountability?
How we collaborate?
Our environment?
How we
choose
tools
What we
care about?
Risk and
mitigation?
How we treat each other?

8. Most business decisions are guesses.
Some are even educated.
Who has the mindset and skills to design
experiments to test and validate assumptions?

9. Agile teams are a place to
cultivate behaviours and
cultures for a new reality
Skills, mindsets and values that are valuable beyond your team.

10. We operate in an
uncertainty-riddled landscape
Effective agile teams are all about managing uncertainty, risk and
emergence.

11. So, you are in a happy, agile team.
You might not all get along, but you have complementary
edges and you mostly don’t want to kill each other.

12. Many agile software teams today
Regular cadence, given just enough to produce but not
enough to thrive.

13. But the rest of your organisation is in chaos
And some might even know they are!

14. Our collective success is too
important to be left to a few
dudes in suits

15. It is time for agile teams and the testing
discipline to go beyond software, beyond
testing and into the organisation

16. Start?

17. What do you bring to the search?
Intelligently
discovering what to
test
Designing safe-to-
fail experiments
The passion to
collaborate
The love of
exploration
The desire to to
make things better
Monitoring
Checking

18. Assume you are invited
Forgiveness beats permission

19. Ask questions.
Go where they lead
About Value, Flow, Quality and Joy
What value do we
deliver as an
organisation?
Why does it take so long
to…?
How do we know we are
delivering the value we
think we are delivering?
What happens if we….?
What kind of organisation do
we want and how will we
know we are getting it? Do we know how good
something needs to
be?
What does Joy mean
for every single person
in my organisation?
What are we searching
for, where should we
look?

20. Don’t do it alone
One person is a “lone nut”, two are a movement.

21. Celebrate.
Reflect. Improve

22. 3 things just happened
What’s in it for me
What’s in it for us
A choice to make.

23. Thank you.
Do good work.
Be good to work with.
Seek Joy.
(no animals were hurt in the
production of this keynote)
@mhsutton

24. PLEASE EVALUATE MY PRESENTATION
BY USING THE RATING FUNCTION WHICH
YOU CAN FIND AT MY SESSION DETAILS
ON:
www.agiletestingday.nl
THANK YOU!