Joseph Ours

Like you, testing expert and international speaker, Joseph Ours, has seen testing succeed and fail in numerous ways over the years. Is it bad processes? Unskilled people? Lack of strategic vision? Lack of appreciation of testing? Can only a few in the industry make an impact? Or, is there a different story?

With over two decades of leading, coaching, speaking, and most importantly, real-life, in-the-trenches experience, his view is radically different. Joseph appreciates, and shares, that leadership makes all the difference to the success of a testing organization. But titles do not instill leadership skills. We should all practice and hone our leadership skills every day. It’s how we should live our life.

Joseph offers expertise as a leader in software quality assurance and testing. He believes in finding ways to harmoniously work with all core IT competencies, and as such as works as a developer, tester, business analyst, and program manager. Joseph’s strategic thought process and ability to translate vision into action has resulted in many large successful initiatives.

In addition to regularly sharing his knowledge by speaking at national professional conference throughout the year, Joseph created and now annually organizes QA or the Highway, a professional development conference focused specifically on software quality assurance and testing (SQAT). Joseph recognized the need for an SQAT professional development conference and made it his mission to create QA or the Highway as a marquis regional event. Since it’s inception in 2012, the event has doubled in size to more than 380 attendees with 26 conference sessions including 2 keynote sessions. Joseph is also the president of Central Ohio Software Quality Assurance and Management (COSQAM) which now has primary responsibility for the event.

Joseph lives in Columbus, Ohio, and has six adult children. He is an early adopter and active technology enthusiast. When not busy with family events, he chairs the Columbus Advisory Council for Per Scholas, a national non-profit organization based in New York, which aims to break the cycle of poverty by providing technology education, access, training and job placement services for people in under-served communities.

Speaking Engagements

Past

2015

• Software Testing Professionals Conference
• Conference for the Association for Software Testing
• Agile and Beyond 2015
• Quest Conference and Expo
• QA or the Highway
• CodeMash
• Guidewire Connections 2015

2014

• KWSQA Targeting Quality Conference
• Northern Ohio Software Quality Assurance Association
• IIBA 2014 Business Analysis Professional Development Day

Articles

• Why You Need Women Testers on Your Team
• Thinking Fast and Slow