Faster Isn't Safer: Quality in DevOps When AI Joins Your Pipeline
AI agents are now writing code, generating tests, reviewing pull requests and triggering deployments. But speed without guardrails is a liability, not an advantage. So where does quality actually come from when so much of the work is automated?
In the next session of our AI Testing Talks webinar series, taking place on 25 June at 1:00 PM CEST, we will be joined by a panel of industry experts – Kari Kakkonen, Katja Orbing, Tal Pe'er, Szilard Szell and Yaron Tsubery – to discuss how DevOps practices such as continuous integration, quality gates, feedback loops and observability provide the safety net that keeps AI-generated software safe to ship.
Drawing on the ISTQB® Certified Tester – Quality in DevOps (CT-QDO) syllabus, co-authored with Rik Marselis, the panellists will share practical lessons from the field and debate what testers and quality engineers should be doing right now to stay relevant in an AI-native SDLC.
AI Testing Talks Host
Anna-Maria Lukina
Marketing Director, Exactpro
Q&A Session Moderator
Iosif Itkin
CEO and co-founder of Exactpro
The session will be streamed live on LinkedIn.
About Exactpro
Exactpro is an independent provider of AI-enabled software testing services for financial sector organisations. Our clients are exchanges, post-trade platform operators, and banks across 20 countries. Our area of expertise comprises protocol-based testing of matching engines, market data, market surveillance, clearing and settlement systems, payments APIs. We help our clients to decrease time to market, maintain regulatory compliance, improve scalability, latency and operational resiliency. Exactpro is involved in a variety of transformation programmes related to large-scale cloud and DLT implementations at systemically important organisations.
Our approaches leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to help harness the power of exploratory data analysis and big data analytics to assist in the generation of test ideas and the interpretation of test results, supported by advanced execution capabilities of the th2 frameworks suite.
Founded in 2009, the Exactpro Group is headquartered in the UK and operates delivery centres in Georgia, Sri Lanka, Armenia, and the UK and representative offices in the US, Canada and Italy, and as well as a global distributed network of consultants.
Are you interested in gaining a deeper understanding of your system, reducing costs, accelerating time to market, while maintaining operational resiliency and regulatory compliance? Visit us at exactpro.com.
Mr. Kari Kakkonen has worked in software testing for 30 years. He is the Service Owner of Customer Expertise Development at Gofore, co-author of ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook and author of the Dragons Out books.
Kari is the 2025 ICT Influencer of the Year, 2021 EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award winner, Tester of the Year in Finland Award 2021 winner and DASA Exemplary DevOps Instructor Award 2023 winner. His ‘Dragons Out’ fantasy book teaches children about software testing. He holds an M.Sc. from Aalto University (aalto.fi). He works mostly with agile testing, lean, test automation, DevOps and AI.
Kari was a member of the Executive Committee of ISTQB (istqb.org) in 2015-2021. He is on the Board of Directors of TMMi (tmmi.org) and He is Treasurer of FiSTB (tmmi.org).
Kari is a singer, snowboarder, kayaker, husband and father.
Rik Marselis is a Principal Quality Consultant at Sogeti in the Netherlands. He is an accredited trainer for TMAP and ISTQB certification training courses and has created and delivered many bespoke workshops and training courses. He is Chairman of the TMAP special interest group. Rik is a fellow of Sogeti’s R&D network SogetiLabs. These R&D activities result in presentations, white-papers, articles, podcasts and blogs. Rik is a co-author of many books, including the TMAP books “Quality for DevOps teams” (2020) and “Amplified Quality Engineering” (2025), and contributes to the www.TMAP.net body of knowledge for quality engineering & testing. He is also a founder of the Belgium & Netherlands Testing Qualifications Board and regular contributor to ISTQB syllabi, lately as a co-author of the CT-QDO, Quality in DevOps syllabus.
Katja Obring is a coach and workshop facilitator who helps software engineering teams understand where AI fits in their quality practice. With 20 years in the industry, her frameworks come from her experience as a DevOps QA engineer, Head of Delivery, and, surprisingly, her early career as a chef. She’s learned that evidence always beats guesswork, and a well-designed experiment will reveal more truth than months of planning ever could.
For the past 30 years, software testing has been Tal’s profession and passion. He’s been working as a tester and test manager before becoming a trainer and consultant, helping organizations to establish and improve test teams and test processes, as well as training testing professionals with various ISTQB® courses and testing workshops.
Tal has been actively involved with ISTQB® since 2008 and has been a member of the Executive Committee in 2017-2023.
Tal is a Principal Consultant and Trainer at Grove Software Testing, one of the UK’s leading training and course materials providers.
Szilárd Széll is a DevOps and AI Transformation Lead, Test Coach and SAFe 6.0 SPC at Eficode. He has a decade of experience with DevOps transformation, especially in the telco industry. He has also worked as an assessor, trainer, facilitator and coach in test automation and testing process improvement.
Szilard is actively involved in the testing community, and is the winner of the 2024 Tester of the Year in Finland award. He runs the Finnish Testing Meetup Group with his friends. He is also active in the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) as the Product Owner of the Quality in DevOps Syllabus. For many years, Szilard has been working on and supporting industry conferences including HUSTEF, UCAAT and EuroSTAR.
An IT executive with extensive experience in building, defining & implementing strategy and managing Project Management, QA, DevOps, Platform and Integration organizations for Large-scale, Complex, Real-time systems across Telecom, Banking, IT, Auto and Medical Devices.
A key figure at ISTQB® – an international professional QA & Testing organization and the market leader in certifying QA & testing professionals. He regularly speaks at local and international professional conferences and lectures on SW Quality & Testing at academic institutions, while presenting industry’s best practices in real-life.
Anna-Maria Lukina is the Marketing Director at Exactpro and Outreach Director for Exactpro’s AI Testing Training programs. In her Marketing Director role, Anna-Maria is responsible for global brand and business development and management of industry events. Coming from a technology background herself, Anna-Maria also wears an Outreach Director hat to bring a strategic vision into Exactpro’s professional development activities such as the award-winning ISTQB®-accredited AI testing course for enterprises and individual learners.
Anna-Maria has co-authored Exactpro’s latest book – ‘Introduction to AI Testing: Guide to ISTQB® CT-AI Certification’ released in September 2025 by BCS Publishing.
With a deep understanding of information systems and technologies and extensive experience in global marketing, Anna-Maria has successfully led the Exactpro brand through product launches, the acquisition by LSEG and the following buyout, countless international and local industry gatherings, as well as the accompanying social media campaigns.
Iosif is co-founder and co-CEO of Exactpro – an independent provider of AI-enabled software testing and related development services for financial organisations. Founded in 2009, Exactpro has a client base of major exchanges, post-trade platform operators, banks and technology vendors across 24 countries.
In his professional career, Iosif has held many technology roles: software developer, performance testing department lead, technology architect – on a number of global financial industry initiatives. Iosif’s expertise at the intersection of high-availability systems and capital markets has enabled him to successfully facilitate technology transformations within exchanges, investment banks and clearing and settlement organisations in London, New York, Milan, Singapore, Sydney and other major financial centres.
Iosif is a co-author of ‘Introduction to AI Testing: Guide to ISTQB® CT-AI Certification’ released in September 2025 by BCS Publishing.