About
Brian is a Kaiako (facilitator) /coach based in Sydney, Australia predominately in the product, agile and software testing space. Originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, Brian affiliates with Ngāti Porou (tribe) through his mum and Ngāti Ingarani (England) through his dad. By day, Brian delivers training and coaching that builds on helping individuals and organisations improve their products and the way they work. He also continues to interact with like-minded agilista, software testers, product folk and anyone that looks to expand on value and making sense of the world around them. By night, he pretends to play the bass, ukulele or guitar or shouts at the TV when the All Blacks are playing. He is also a Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls fan (Jordan era) :). Brian was a keyniote speaker at Agile Australia 2024 (Melbourne) where he spoke on Connecting Te Ao Māori with Agile - how values from the Māori world (te ao) can help create connection as leaders. He's also spoken at Star West 2012 (Disneyland, California) where he spoke on using agile practices on a non-agile project and has spoken at other conferences such as ANZTB 2010, STANZ 2009, 2010 conferences (2010 as a keynote speaker) and Let’s Test OZ 2014. He also founded the Kiwi Workshop on Software Testing (KWST) along with software testing legend, James Bach and has helped build communities in the software and agile spaces. Brian is also a co-founder of a podcast called Epich Aotearoa – Create a better future! This podcast, born during covid, has interviewed business owners, military and police personnel, social impact people and professional sportspeople and they all had amazing stories to tell! Brian is an experienced kaiako, product person, coach, test manager, tester, consultant, and speaker with over two decades of experience in the craft. Page 1 of 13 Blog: http://bjosman.wordpress.com/ Email: brian.osman@gmail.com Specialties: Software Testing, Test Management, Exploratory Testing, Session Based Test Management, Risk Based Testing, Conference Speaker, Community Builder, agile, Kanban, product management, facilitator
Key Skills
Experience
Facilitator and Coach | Software Education
Apr 2017 - May 2025
Sydney, Australia As a facilitator and coach with SoftEd, my role was to help customers amplify the skills that they already had. I delivered training, coached, consulted, undertook course development and instructional design. In fact, most of my experience twith SoftEd has been in helping organisations work better. From a facilitation perspective, I am very much aligned with understanding context of the workshop, responding to the energy in the room and delivering an experience that suits the audience. From a coaching perspective, its definitely aligning to the needs and wants of the client where appropriate. As well as delivering and building courses and learning journeys, I also build and deliver workshops including speaking at conferences (including a keynote last year at Agile Australia 2024). Whilst i have a leaning towards software testing, I also work in (and deliver) product and project management, different frameworks, facilitation, coaching, leadership, business analysis and AI. During my time with SoftEd I have had the opportunity to work with Australian federal government, local and state government, utilities, telcommunications, medical equipment companies, fintechs and software houses, insurance and most of the big four banks (Australia). I have also worked with numerous large organistions based in Singapore, the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. | Agile | Training | Knowledge | Software testing | Agile coaching | Coaching | Skill | Government | Start Ups | Finance | Insurance | Wealth | Software | Hardware | Education | Workshops | Leadership | Governance | Product | Facilitation | Coaching | Keynote | Course Design | Instructional Design
Keynote Speaker | Agile Australia
Jul 2024 - Jul 2024
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Key note speaker at Australia's pre-eminent agile conference. This year it is Melbourne (12-13 August 2024 -- https://agileaustralia.com.au/2024/ ). Connecting Te Ao Māori with Agile - how values from the Māori world (te ao) can help create connection as leaders He waka eke noa “we are all in this together”. We talk about leadership, but do we actually demonstrate it? The Māori world permeates values such as manaakitanga, whanaungatanga and kotahitanga amongst many others. These values (roughly translated as hospitality, connections and unity) can help bridge the human world with the corporate world. In this talk, Brian Osman will share a personal journey of discovery with these values and how this has helped understand better how people work, teams form and the ‘why’ that drives them. By building a caring, connected, inclusive and unified space we then start the road to higher performing teams. The world needs leaders that model these values more than ever.
Co-Founder | Epich Aotearoa
Oct 2019 - Dec 2023
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia From a tech start up to a New Zealand flavoured podcast that supports, encourages, uplifts, educates and recognises people from all walks of life and at different stages of their journey. As co-founder alongside my brother in law, Joe Hotai, Epich Aotearoa was designed to pull people together. We interviewed aspiring entrepreneurs who dreamed of having a positive impact, by providing a platform for them to spread their good news in the hopes of connecting with the right people. Their aspirations, their vision, their dreams can and will help each of us connect to our passions and hopefully inspire us to take action. We acknowledge and recognise individuals and/or small and large businesses in who are doing amazing things, but choose to fly under the radar. We invite people who want to recognise these unsung heros to contact us and let us know so that we can acknowledge and tautoko (support) their contributions to society and communities alike as well as promote positive awareness around their cause. We meet with and learn from successful people across a broad range of industries in order to invite them to share their journey, knowledge and experience. The intent, is so that we all can take those lived experiences, learn from them, be inspired and motivated and apply those things that will help us in our own unique situations to progress. We have interviewed and engaged with entrepreneurs, social influencers and impacters, sports people and first responders/military personnel. Epich Aotearoa - Create a Better Future!
Principal Consultant | OsmanIT
Feb 2012 - Mar 2017
Sydney, Australia At OsmanIT, I leveraged my expertise in creative and exploratory software testing to provide consulting and coaching services. My role involved training teams in agility and ensuring they are equipped with the skills necessary to excel in software development. I focused on fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement within organizations, helping them navigate the complexities of modern software testing. I had worked with individuals and teams from utilities through to government.
Test Team Lead | Tyro Payments
Aug 2015 - Dec 2016
Sydney, Australia Tyro Payments was a Fintech company that has gone through massive growth. Tyro specialised in merchant credit, debit and EFTPOS acquiring. My focus amongst this was develop a strategy for hiring, upskilling, training, mentoring and coaching and helping the testers become aligned to the buiness goals. Some of the achievements I have had so far are:- *Improved the testing process for the Point of Sales certification team allowing for better visibility of work and accountability. I redisgned the kanban, engaged the sales team and decreased our turn around time for certification to the Tyro network from 6 weeks to 1 week. *Worked on cross team alignment and strategy to help ensure that all the testers are aligned as a test practice to the goals of the business especially as the testers distributed amongst delivery teams *Coached and mentored testers in various aspects of testing approaches and soft skills such as delivering presentations, leadership and planning. Also taught different test techniques such as decision tables, use of heustics and oracles and helped testers look for the most useful way to test an artifact. *Hired ten additional testers over a six month period who could engage with developers, understand business problems, have technical knowledge and could adapt quickly to our weekly depolyment schedule *Collaborating with Delivery and Engineering leads through weekly meetings concerning topics such as performance management, hiring for teams, tester skillset and expectations and test environments *Improving processes (for example testing within delivery teams, POS certification and hiring) *Facilitated various test related workshops tio help improve the test approach and retrospectives *Help facilitate resolving virtual test environment and automation issues and concerns
Test Lead | ING DIRECT Australia
Feb 2015 - Jun 2015
Agile team working on building a new product offering called mixed zone leading which was part of the commercial lending space. Also looked afer business as usual activities. agile|scrum|kanban|lead|Bancs|Commercial Lending|Trix|SAM|LPI|MTM|UAT| SQL| Mentoring| System Testing| e2e| .Net |
Senior Test Analyst | Rubik Financial Limited
Jul 2014 - Feb 2015
Sydney, Australia Working on a financial product called COIN and embedded within an existing team that uses Kanban. Also worked on the INC (Insurance package), COCO (online COIN product) and mobile versions of COIN. Consulted with regards to the test vision and strategy and preparing presentation to C-Level management. | Consulting| lead| agile coach| Web| Mobile| COIN| Finanical Planning| Client| SQL| Datafeed| Training| Exploratory testing| HP ALM| App|.Net | Lets Test OZ 2014
community | It takes an entire village to raise a tester - building a software testing
Sep 2014 - Sep 2014
Gave a session presentation at the Lets Test OZ 2014 software testing conference held in the Blue Mountains, Sydney, Australia. The presentation was my experience report on how to build a community and in particular the growth of the context driven community in Wellington, New Zealand.
Test Team Lead | University of Sydney
Sep 2013 - Jun 2014
Responsible for the daily operational aspects of the test team spread over multiple agile workstreams. I mentor, coach, assist, deliver, test a context driven approach to testing on the Sydney student program. This approach includes the use of exploratory testing,scenarios, automated selenium tests and includes multiple *phases* of testing (system, regression, integration/end to end, UAT) driven by the appropriate context of the situation and project. I also create test plans for specific test activities, maintain the test lab and help administer JIRA. | JIRA| Exploratory| UAT| Lead| Selenium Web driver| Regression| Integration| End to End| Scenarios | .Net| Web| SoapUI |
Test Capability Manager | Telecom New Zealand
May 2012 - Sep 2013
As the Test Capability Manager for Telecom New Zealand - Testing Services - I was responsible for primarily two things:- *Capability and skill increase amongst the 180+ team. This included mentoring sessions (both formal and informal), training sessions on topics such as leadership, exploratory testing, effective test design and leading workshops on capability. Also implemented a reporting program for Test Directors which focused on the *story* as opposed to talking only to metrics. *As tool owner for Testing Services, I was responsible for the governance, strategy, direction and operation of all tool sets particularly HP ALM (including Performance Center and HP automation). This included defining business workflow, policy and processes for the tool (and then implementing them). I was also involved in the HP QC v10 upgrade to ALM v11 (as tool owner) and Performance Center v9.52 to ALM v11. This included liaison with HP and Telecom management. | Capability | Strategy| Policy| HP ALM| Performance Center| QTP| Governance
6 Myths of Software Testing | Test Professionals Network
Dec 2012 - Dec 2012
Wellington, New Zealand Spoke to the local testing community on what i see as 6 Myths that trouble software testing. They are: Myth One: Test leadership is dead Myth Two: Being certified = skilled Myth Three: Testing approaches are mutually exclusive Myth Four: Testing is easy Myth Five: No spec means no testing Myth Six: Test cases should be written in advance If you are interested in the presentation, please email me. | Speaker| Myths| Community
Session speaker - Using agile practices even on non agile projects | Star West 2012
Oct 2012 - Oct 2012
Anaheim, California Sometimes, test managers and teams can get bogged down in rigid processes, excessive documentation, and simply too much data, resulting in less actual testing getting done. The good news is that there is a better way! Brian Osman describes how he applies agile and lean practices within his test team, even on non-agile projects. Brian shares his experiences with low-tech, high-value techniques such as big visible charts to track and share information. He was able to cut down on long meetings and eliminate complex status reports while still helping his team stay focused and on track. They improved visibility and communications with management, development, and business stakeholders while reducing interruptions. Brian explains how his new approach positively influenced other projects around them and how it helped everyone stay on task. Learn ways your test team can “go agile”—even if the rest of the project has not. | Disneyland| Star West| Session Speaker| Agile Software Test Professionals
Leading from the inside out | STP Test Management Summit - Presentation - Mentoring Testers:
Apr 2012 - Apr 2012
Online STP online Test Management Summit with Scott Barber - see http:// www.softwaretestpro.com/Crew/1086/STP-Online-Summit-Test-Management/ Management+Teams for the webinar recording- (my required sign in) I've posted the slide deck here - http://www.slideshare.net/brianosman/stp-os2- osman-1 | Management| STP| Summit| Leadership
Assistant Editor | Testing Circus Magazine
Mar 2011 - Mar 2012
Collate and arrange interviews for the magazine | Test magazine| Interviews
Test Consultant | QualIT
Mar 2011 - Feb 2012
Wellington, New Zealand | Test Manager| Session based test management| JIRA| Fog bugz| Decision tables| UAT| Regression| .Net |
Founder | Kiwi Workshop on Software Testing
Jun 2011 - Jun 2011
Wellington New Zealand Co-founder and facilitator of KWST #1 and #2 - Kiwi Workshop on Software Testing with James Bach as mentor/content owner/co-founder and trainer of the 17 leaders of NZ software testing. | Founder| Testing workshop| Leadership Software Education
Knowledge Engineer | 2 years 6 months
Oct 2008 - Mar 2011
Deliverer of software testing and agile related courses. I helped create courses, consult and be involved in the testing community. | Training| Leadership | Community| Fitnesse| Selenium| JIRA| Whitepapers|
Software Test Professional (with Matt Heusser ) | TWisT Podcast #11
Sep 2010 - Sep 2010
Online Podcast An interview by Matt Heusser on behalf of Software Test Professional with myself and Jared Quinert (Melbourne, Australia). Here is the link to that podcast http://www.softwaretestpro.com/Item/4913/Twist-11—Twist-down-under%21/
STANZ 2010 Keynote Speaker | Blog| Agile| Software testing| Certification | Mentor| Course development
Aug 2010 - Aug 2010
From Basketball Coach to Tester: Lessons From the Hardwood Basketball is a dynamic, fluid game where real time decision making, individual talents and teamwork must all gel in order to achieve optimum performance. As a basketball coach, there are lessons that I've drawn from the game that I've found to be applicable in improving my testing and the test teams I've worked with. It's these parallels between basketball and testing - the lessons I've learned over 20 years of basketball coaching and 12 years software testing - that I want to share with you. Thoughts and ideas around individual improvement, team dynamics and heuristics for the player that, as testers, team leads or managers we can use to better manage our testing, improve our own talents and raise the performance of the whole team. Good coaches don't stand still. Good players don't stand still and neither do
Session Speaker at the ANZTB 2010 Conference | good testers!
Mar 2010 - Mar 2010
Conference speaker at the ANZTB 2010 conference in Melbourne. I presented
Exploratory Testing and Session-based Test Management | on framing Exploratory testing with session based test management.
Feb 2010 - Feb 2010
Think James Bach, think Exploratory testing ... is it a structured approach or is it just a free for all hacking session? Session Based Test Management (SBTM) not only enables a test team to manage and structure Exploratory Test sessions, but also provides a framework for reporting back to stakeholders on progress. What's more, it helps keep test teams performing with high levels of creativity, engagement and fun! This 45 minute presentation will cover: •What is Exploratory Testing •How to structure your Exploratory Testing •What is Session-Based Test Management •The information produced by Session-Based Testing •How to help your team improve its Exploratory Testing activities About The Speaker Brian Osman provides training and consultancy in software testing for Software Education. He brings over 11 years of software testing experience to the training courses he delivers for Software Education and the consultancy services he offers to Software Education customers. A hugely popular trainer, Brian has worked with a variety of industries, covering topics as diverse as Advanced Test Management, Agile Testing and Web Based Testing.
Consultant | Equinox Ltd
Aug 2007 - Oct 2008
Consult and train (software testing)
Senior Test Analyst | ANZ National Bank Ltd
Mar 2007 - Aug 2007
Worked on the OSCAR, BOSS and RIFE II projects (including preparing and delivering software testing training to new testers) | Foreign Exchange| Java| .Net| Matrix| Scenarios
Senior Test Analyst | Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade New Zealand
Jun 2006 - Mar 2007
HRIS upgrade project. Co-ordinated and planned test activities including UAT. Main approach used session based exploratory testing. | Payroll| Timekeeping | HR| .Net| Regression| Test strategy| Test plan
Senior Test Analyst | Kiwibank
Jan 2005 - Jan 2006
Possum testing at Kiwibank
Senior Test Analyst | Ministry of Justice
Jan 2005 - Jan 2005
Coaching and mentoring and working on a .Net application for judicial enquiries. | .Net | Exploratory testing | Justice sector |
Test Consultant | Ministry of Economic Development New Zealand
Aug 2004 - Dec 2004
Used an exploratory approach to software testing (and first introduction to session based testing)
Test Analyst | Simpl
Jan 2003 - Jan 2004
Test Manager | Ministry of Justice New Zealand
Jan 2003 - Dec 2003
Test Manager on the Clean Slate project co-ordinating a number of external agencies, vendors and 3x internal test teams (including the testers on the project team)
Test Analyst | New Zealand Police
Jan 2003 - Jan 2003
| Load balancing| Server clustering | IBM
Test Analyst | Ministry of Education New Zealand
Jan 2001 - Jan 2002
Systems Business Analyst | Inland Revenue
Jan 1987 - Jan 2001
Systems Business Analyst | Inland Revenue New Zealand
Jan 1987 - Aug 1999
Education & Certificates
Rapid Software Testing Rapid Software Testing
Jan 2016
BBST Bug Advocacy
Jan 2010
Cert, Software Testing
BBST Foundations
Jan 2008
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