About the event
Introducing our first QA E-commerce Forum London, 2017.
Decisions on E-commerce investment - whether for security or sales - have been more important.
Our expert speakers will be sharing the lessons they have learned from the decisions their companies have made.
Speakers
Paul Mason House of Fraser
Director of Architecture and AssurancePaul Mason is Director of Architecture and Assurance at House of Fraser. He leads the
architecture and assurance functions within the IT Division which are responsible for
delivering innovative system solutions; providing quality assurance for all technology
deliverables; and creating technical and assurance strategies for House of Fraser's
multichannel retail business in the UK.
He has over 25 years’ experience in the IT industry and more than 20 years’ experience in
the retail sector, having worked at Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury's before joining House
of Fraser in 2016. He has a successful track record of shaping, architecting and delivering
high impact retail technology solutions.
Chris Griffiths House of Fraser
Director of Change DeliveryJon Townsend National Trust
Chief Information OfficerJon Townsend is a leader in technology. He moved to the role of Chief Information Officer
for the National Trust in August of 2017. Previously he was the Director of Technology and
Information Security. He holds an MBA with the Open University and an MSc with Cranfield
University in the Design of Information Systems.
He was previously held a commission as an Officer in the British Army, fulfilling a variety of technical
and leadership roles culminating in regimental command. Upon leaving the military he became a
senior civil servant responsible for developing cyber security and intelligence capability for the
Department for Work and Pensions. He is also a Certified Data Protection Practitioner with the
British Computer Society, a Certified Information Security Manager with ISACA and GIAC Certified
Enterprise Defender with SANS.
Ingo Philipp Tricentis
Agile Evangelist, Product ManagerIngo Philipp is an award-winning Exploratory Testing and Agile thought leader, with a resume of speaking engagements that span the globe. In his role as a Product Manager at Tricentis, his responsibilities range from product development and product marketing to test management, test conception, test design, and test automation. His experiences with software testing embrace the application of agile testing as well as classical testing methodologies in various sectors including financial services, consumer goods, commercial services, healthcare, materials, telecommunications, and energy.
Kashif Saleem Hotels.com
Director of Quality AssuranceKash started his QA career straight out of university in 2001 and has never looked back! He has worked in the defence, medical, education, psychology and travel industries for start-ups and multi-national corporations, covering all aspects of QA.
Alex Wotton John Lewis
Head of Testing and Environment PracticeFrom career kick off as a Test Analyst to leading a Testing and Environment Practice, Alex is a career Quality evangelist, working across many organisations and industries as a consultant, and now focused on helping deliver Quality and Value at John Lewis- the UK’s Leading Omni-Channel Retailer. Alex is passionate about the evolution of Testing and Quality Management, and his current focus is helping build the right culture across all Delivery Teams to support John Lewis IT’s Digital Transformation Journey.
Mikey Warner Office Depot
Director of QA
Mikey is a leader in test and QA transformation, turning around organisations' testing and QA practises, with the end goal for each organisation to be utilising industry best practises, coupled with a pragmatic approach that budgets and available resources will allow. It has always been his philosophy that to get the best out his teams he needs to particularly focus on mentoring and growing his own people.
He has worked within several different industries applying these same practises across them all, notably Government (MoJ) Mobile Telephony (BT, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Three UK), betting and gaming (Ladbrokes).
He is currently Director of QA at Office Depot, an opportunity that allowed him to build his own test and QA practise from the ground up, rather than turn something else around. In particular to migrate their eCommerce offering from a Legacy platform onto Hybris across the whole of Europe.
Graham Perry Neotys
Territory Manager, UK and IrelandGraham has been the Neotys Territory Manager for the UK & Ireland since
2013. Starting out as a tester in 1976 (before test tools existed) he has
seen a lot of change in the status of testing and noted the advances in
the professional status of testers.
He is an advocate of the unique skills that testers bring to software
delivery and concerned by moves in some circles to completely replace
testers by automation or move the testing role into development.
Graham keenly follows the migration to agile and DevOps practices but is
sometimes surprised by the approach to test tools. "Many organisations
turn to agile for faster delivery but never evaluate the productivity of
the tools they use."
Simon White Experian
Global Head of Engineering ServicesSimon started as a Process Engineer in manufacturing (hence his love of automation & lean). He took a view of the future of manufacturing in the UK and jumped into IT, working in Project, Programme, Release, Deployment & Implementation, Ops, DevOps & Engineering Services in Retail, Distribution, Gaming and now FS. He is passionate about how we can implement technologies (the easy bit) to change the way people think and work (the tough bit).
For Simon, DevOps isn’t a job title, it’s a culture. And it’s not about reducing costs. It’s about getting smart Engineers to build machines that do the dull stuff (including delivering process & governance, without getting bored) and freeing Developers to do the creative stuff.
Steven Armstrong Paddy Power Betfair
Principal DevOps Automation EngineerA DevOps solution architect, process automation specialist, author and honours graduate in Computer and Electronic Systems, with a proven track record of streamlining companies' development architecture and processes so they can deliver software at pace. Specialising in agile, continuous integration, infrastructure as code, networking as code, continuous delivery and deployment, who to date has worked for 10 years for leading consulting, financial services, benefits and gambling companies in the IT sector.
Steven is the technical lead for Paddy Power Betfair's award winning i2 OpenStack project, which is now well into the migration phase of the project. So far over four hundred production applications have been migrated onto the i2 platform, using continuous delivery and a fully automated approach building infrastructure and networking as code. This has enabled the company to create a single customer platform for the newly merged company, thus enabling the company to support multiple brands from the same code base.
Kostas Perifanos Argos
Lead Machine Learning EngineerKostas joined Argos in 2017 as a Lead Machine Learning engineer. Prior to Argos, he worked at Royal Mail, Mailonline, Pearson and in research; he was involved in a broad range of projects from European FP6 research programs to EdTech, Analytics, Search, Predictive Modelling using Machine Learning and AI. He is interested in Deep Learning, Distributed Computing, Optimisation, Search, Predictive Analytics and Natural Language Processing.
Shane Kelly easyJet
Programme QA and Test ManagerAs an experienced promoter of Agile, Shane has helped companies such as William Hill and easyJet to develop the changes required to transform their ways of working, to build autonomy and develop towards a culture of DevOps. With a large history in testing I have worked to drive Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration into the SDLC, thereby speeding up the overall delivery lifecycle. Currently, as Program Test Manager for easyJet, Shane is responsible for the overarching quality of delivery and in building the automated test frameworks utilised within the build pipeline. Working to drive Behavioural Driven Development and Continuous Integration into the SDLC and give teams autonomy to deliver.
Daniel Corti Klarna
Technical Product ManagerBio coming soon.
Adam Bialy Sainsbury's
Head of Payments and Senior Product OwnerBio coming soon.
Agenda
8:00am
Arrival, refreshments, and networking
9:00am
Welcome Address
Matthew Crabbe, CEO and Founder – QA Media
9:15am
The Digital Transition at House of Fraser
Speakers: Chris Griffiths – Director of Change Delivery and Paul Mason – Director of Architecture and Assurance – House of Fraser
In 2016, one of the UK’s most famous retailers made the critical strategic decision to re-build its E-commerce platform. Paul and Chris will describe the programme that House of Fraser put in place, and how it has moved to DevOps and automated testing.
9:50am
Embedding GDPR Compliance in the SDLC
Speaker: Jon Townsend – Chief Information Officer – National Trust
Compliance with the EU’s new data protection regulation GDPR currently poses many challenges in software architecture. Jon will explain how National Trust are embedding compliance into software development whilst assessing the impact and shared challenges that this regulation is creating.
10:25am
Coffee & Networking
10:55am
Rediscovering Exploratory Testing for E-commerce
Speaker: Ingo Philipp – Agile Evangelist, Product Manager –Tricentis
Although exploratory testing has been around for ages, it often leads to confusion. Is exploratory testing an activity – something that you do? Or is it an approach – a way or a style of doing something? Ingo Philipp will outline the common confusions and controversies on this topic. He explains what exploratory testing is, why to use it, and when to practice it. Ingo will specify heuristics and techniques of exploratory testing, especially useful in fast-paced E-commerce development environments.
11:30am
Agile and the Cloud at Hotels.com
Speaker: Kashif Saleem – Director of Quality Assurance – Hotels.com
What difference do Agile methodologies really make when it comes to implementing test automation and Cloud-based test environments? Kashif will walk you through the key steps that Hotels.com has taken to establish continuous app delivery.
12:05pm
Panel – “Load Testing for Heavy Bursts: Managing Environments and New Methodologies in the Cloud”
Panellists:
• Graham Perry – Territory Manager, UK and Ireland – Neotys
• Mikey Warner – Director of QA – Office Depot
• Alex Wotton – Head of Testing and Environment Practice – John Lewis
E-commerce retailers face increasingly complex online load patterns. Customer requirements are changing; for example with Black Friday sales. This expert panel will discuss how companies must ensure that their applications are ready to meet their customers’ needs. Our panel of experts will discuss how they are meeting those challenges, in particular with Cloud-based data and test environments that are dramatically improving the range of load testing. Just as important – when is testing not required?
12:40pm
Lunch & Networking
13:40pm
Panel Discussion–“DevOps, Test Automation and Service Virtualisation: The Road to Continuous Delivery”
Panellists:
• Steven Armstrong – Principal DevOps Automation Engineer – Paddy Power Betfair
• Kashif Saleem – Director of Quality Assurance – Hotels.com
• Lewis Swan – Test Automation Specialist – Accenture
• Simon White – Global Head of Engineering Services – Experian
Our experts will examine the challenges shared by otherwise different companies. Sometimes the cultural and management changes are the major obstacle. The other key focus of our panel is DevOps as the enabler of cutting-edge technologies; notably test service virtualisation.
14:15pm
Machine Learning and Testing Metrics at Argos
Speaker:
Kostas Perifanos – Lead Machine Learning Engineer – Argos
How can machine learning be utilised to enhance retailing opportunities? Sharing his experiences at Argos, Kostas will examine how artificial intelligence can be built into software development and how these results can be tested.
14:50pm
Coffee & Networking
15:20pm
Test Automation at easyJet
Speaker:
Shane Kelly – Programme QA and Test Manager – easyJet
easyJet is rebuilding its E-commerce platform, consisting of eleven principal operating systems and 8 development workstreams. A key objective is an easy-to-maintain test automation environment that can be applied across the enterprise.
15:55pm
Testing the Integration of Payment Platforms
Speaker:
Daniel Corti – Technical Product Manager – Klarna
Stockholm based Klarna are one of the most exciting new disruptors in E-commerce payments. This session will outline testing strategies for the seamless integration of payment platforms from the perspective of a modern bank. Daniel will share strategies that Klarna have applied to ensure best engineering practices whilst operating in a highly regulated environment, all while remaining agile and revolutionising the payments industry.
16:30pm
Revolutionary Changes in Data Management and Competition: How GDPR and PSD2 Affect Software Developmen
Panellists:
Adam Bialy – Head of Payments and Senior Product Owner – Sainsbury’s
Graeme Spurr – Partner – The Real Contracts Company
Panellists will consider the impact of the EU’s new regulations – GDPR and PSD2 – on software development. How will you ensure you comply with tough new data protection laws? And how can you make the most of the opportunities created by PSD2?
17:05pm
Cocktail Reception
Gold sponsors
Tricentis
Tricentis, the Continuous Testing Company, specializes in agile market leading software testing tools for enterprises. We help Global 2000 companies adopt DevOps and gain success by achieving automation rates of over 90%. Our integrated software testing solution, Tricentis Tosca, consists of a unique Model-based Test Automation and Test Case Design approach, encompassing risk-based testing, test data management and provisioning, service virtualization, and more. We are established as a reliable enterprise partner, helping to deliver significant performance improvements to testing projects.
Analysts recognize Tricentis as a leader in Software Test Automation, with Model-based Test Automation and Test Case Design as standout features. The company’s more than 400 customers include global names from the Top 500 brands such as A&E, Allianz, BMW, Deutsche Bank, HBO, Lexmark, Orange, Starbucks, Toyota, UBS, Vantiv, Vodafone, and Zurich Insurance.
Silver sponsors
Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialised skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions - underpinned by the world's largest delivery network - Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 373,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives.
Eggplant
Built by Testplant, the eggPlant range of software quality tools supports the design, development, test and management of software applications for mobile, desktop and mainframe use in any technology platform environment, ensuring services assurance for digital business.
The tools are relevant in agile, mobile, web and DevOps deployments, eggPlant use improves and reports on the quality and responsiveness of software systems, reduces time to market and lowers costs be introducing process automation.
Testplant's products are used in over 30 countries by well over 350 enterprise customers in sections which include Financial Services, Automotive, Healthcare, Media, Retail and Defense.
Neotys
Neotys is the leading innovator in Continuous Performance Validation for Web and Mobile applications. Neotys load testing (NeoLoad) and performance monitoring (NeoSense) enable teams to produce faster applications, deliver new features and enhancements in less time and simplify interactions across Dev, QA, Ops and business stakeholders. Neotys has helped over 1600 customers test, monitor and improve performance at every stage of the application development lifecycle, from development to production, leveraging its automated and collaborative tooling.
