Mr. Kari Kakkonen has worked in software testing for almost 30 years. He is the co-author of ACT 2 LEAD Software Testing Leadership Handbook.

Kari is the 2021 EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award winner, Tester of the Year in Finland Award 2021 winner, and DASA Exemplary DevOps Instructor Award 2023 winner. He is the CEO of Dragons Out Oy, created for a fantasy book to teach software testing to children, but now delivery more books and training and consulting services. Kari Kakkonen delivered trainings, consulting, and coaching at Knowit in Finland 2002-2024. He has M.Sc. from Aalto University (aalto.fi). He works mostly with agile testing, lean, test automation, DevOps and AI.Kari has almost 30 years of testing experience, 15 years of agile experience, 10 years of DevOps experience and 5 years of AI experience. He's been working in ICT consulting, training, finance, insurance, pension insurance, public sector, embedded software, telecom, gaming, and industry domains.

Kari was on the Executive Committee of ISTQB (istqb.org) 2015-2021. He is on the Board of Directors of TMMi (tmmi.org). He is the Treasurer of FiSTB (fistb.fi). He is the co-founder of FiSTB Testing Assembly, the biggest testing seminar in Finland, for which he has been a co-organiser for 10 years.

Kari is a singer, snowboarder, kayaker, husband and dad.

Kari has given public talks and is a passionate advocate for software testing and QA. He is active on LinkedIn and welcomes you to network.