TestCon Europe 2026
October 20-23
Vilnius & Online
Rick Tracy
About
Rick styles himself as a process optimizer, a term he made up after attempting to explain why a tester was coaching CEOs on quality. In this role, he helps individuals, teams, and organizations gain better insight into the quality aspects of their work and develop creative solutions to enhance quality in general. With a background in psychology, public and business administration, communications, and, of course, testing, Rick engages on every available level in order to find the most effective optimization methods for any process.
Questions form the core of Rick's methods, including the Big Three:
Does it work?
Does it play well with others?
Is it what people want?
But above all, the most important question remains, “How can I help?”
Rick lives in a tiny village in the Netherlands, preferring a quiet base from which to launch adventures. He enjoys games, books, walks, puzzles, and, above all, conversations.
Rick Tracy | Romeo & JIRA: How I fell in love with Test Task Management
Administration. Documentation. Estimation. Is there anything more tedious during the workday than working with a task manager? All the hours spent ticking boxes, refining tasks, and moving them from one state to the next. For many people, it is the worst part of the job.
But what if Rick Tracy were to tell attendees that they may have been ignoring what could be the love of their lives?
In this talk, Rick will bring attendees along on his experience of falling in love with test task managers and how they have helped boost his testing substantially on multiple levels. Attendees will learn how to make every task count, make every box in any task manager a source of actions, and create the ultimate stream to feed their testing efforts.
Main statement: Good task management leads to excellent tests, and it is 100% a team effort. Rick will show how teams can get easy buy-in for high-quality testing by mastering admin.
Key learnings :
- Good setup means far less effort for far higher-quality output.
- Tests can be organically generated through good admin.
- Good team communication underpins and is aided by good admin.