Gitte Ottosen, Passionate about agile development and test within a mature process framework

Gitte Ottosen is a program test manager at Systematic in Denmark, a company that delivers mission critical system software to the defence and healthcare sectors. This places extreme demands on testing as a key instrument to guarantee highly reliable software of impeccable quality.

As a career tester, Gitte has over 14 years of experience in the field of test design and management and holds an ISEB Practitioner Certificate in software testing. She is a self-confessed test evangelist who sermonizes the need for a structured and committed approach to test at every given opportunity. This has given her a leading role in Systematic in terms of constantly driving test practice and test awareness – a role which not only requires profound professional insight, but also passion and persistence – qualities that Gitte holds in abundance.

Presentation: "Yes, you Really Can Have Agility and High Maturity at the Same Time"

Track: Agile in Practice

Time: Tuesday 16:15 - 17:15

Location: Store Sal

Abstract: Is a high maturity ratings or high agility the way forward for your organization? We believe that both are necessary, and our experience shows that these two approaches work very well together. We would like to share this experience with you.

Our organization has had a CMMI level 5 rating since 2005. We will describe how we do things in our software projects, what benefits we achieve from combining high maturity according to CMMI with agile principles and practices, and the challenges we encounter. The presentation will contain little theorizing but lots of concrete experience. We don't intend to tell you how your organization should work but just tell you what works for us.

Our work has crystallized as a documented software development method which is used in all our projects. The method claims neither completeness, universality, nor originality but it contains most of what a project needs to develop and test software. It is simple, effective and habitable. It is inspired by several published methods and techniques but is built exclusively on our own best practices.

Key points of the presentation:

Outline and highlights of our software development method
Why the method helps us achieve a high maturity rating according to CMMI
Why the method helps us being and becoming an agile organization
How testers and developers work together within the method

Target audience: Developers and testers. And anybody else interested in the execution of software development projects.