Irja is a Quality Manager at Gideon with almost 15 years of experience in the IT industry. She started her professional adventure as a software tester and business analyst, after which she took over the product manager role in the first Croatian unicorn. After a multi-year product adventure, Irja decided to accept the challenge of establishing testing practices and integrating quality from the very beginning. For the past few years, she has focused on modern exploratory testing, developing quality engineering practices, process organization, and encouraging healthy collaboration between teams. In addition, she is an active member of several Croatian and international communities focused on testing and quality, including the global community „Women In Testing“. She can often be found as a guest at professional conferences where she enthusiastically conveys her experiences.

After more than a decade in software, Irja entered a completely different world, the world of robotics, where software and hardware work together. To make the challenge even more interesting, the robots she encounters do not have the privilege of working in isolated environments, nor are they easily tamed. These robots are several-ton autonomous beasts doing live operations in warehouses alongside humans. The robots face many daily uncertainties, such as low-light conditions, unexpected movements, objects, and unpredictable human behavior. The consequences of faults in such environments can result in severe damage or even injuries, so the risks are very high. Much higher than in any other industry Irja worked in her career. In her talk „Testing Autonomous Beasts: With Great Value Comes Great Responsibility“ she will indicate that the value of testing the software that powers the robot’s autonomy in such a high-risk context is crucial. Testing helps to gather relevant information to understand the shortcomings, bridge the quality gaps, and act promptly to prevent failures. And also, Irja will share how modern exploratory testing brings value to robotics when the stakes are high, and there is no room for some mistakes because they are unrecoverable.