Markku Kestikievari is the consultant in charge of testing and quality assurance services at Nextcon, while leading the development of the services. Markku has over 20 years of experience in quality assurance and has worked in a variety of roles in Nextcon’s customer projects.

– I have worked as a test manager, agile coach, scrum master, service manager, test team account manager, process developer, etc. The range of tasks and responsibilities can vary greatly depending on the job, Markku says and continues.

– Sometimes it can also happen that when I go to a client to develop test automation and methods, for example, I find myself a few months later as a test manager leading an acceptance testing team.

A versatile talent and a good team player who “sells himself”

Markku develops Nextcon’s testing services together with testing experts to suit the customer’s needs. The team includes top experts in the field, with whom it is inspiring and rewarding to develop something new.

– The interesting thing about being a consultant is that a versatile expert and a good team player “sells himself”. Clients are happy to hire reliable and helpful consultants because there are always needs and work in progress, and new needs are constantly emerging.

“I recognised an inner fire in myself to explore and understand how an app or service works.”

Marku’s career started in the early 2000s in a prominent testing manager role, where he was responsible for the acceptance testing of a mobile operator’s billing system.

– The level of ambition, the scale and complexity of the system were already such that the young and fresh engineer was sometimes overwhelmed. However, years of hard work, a keen interest, a willingness to learn and perseverance paid off and the billing system was completed and put into production.

Over the years, he has gained experience in a wide range of industries, including mobile telephony, pension insurance, healthcare and various public sector agencies. Markku finds quality assurance development work particularly interesting and rewarding.

– The biggest problem in development is often lack of time, as I also work as a testing consultant on client projects and time for development is very limited. However, the most important thing is to act as an initiator and promoter of new innovations and services,” Markku says.

Quality assurance is an important part of the product development of software and services.

Markku says that the importance of testing and quality is growing every year and this is reflected in the high demand for jobs in the industry and even in new jobs and roles.

Alongside service development, new testing tools and methods need to be explored to provide customers with a competitive and high quality service. Automation, artificial intelligence and robotics are also increasingly used in testing.

– As systems and software grow in complexity and scale, automation and robotics are becoming increasingly important. The proportion of manual testing needs to be reduced in order to provide a cost-effective and high-quality testing service to the customer.

A varied job description keeps you interested every day of the year

Markku values the freedom and opportunity to influence his own work and career development.

– At Nextcon, I have had the opportunity to work in interesting positions and the company has allowed me to develop both as an entrepreneur and as a versatile expert in different industries. As an entrepreneur, I get to develop our company together with my colleagues, which makes for a varied job description and keeps me interested every day of the year.

Nextcon’s corporate culture

At Nextcon, consultants are encouraged to innovate, propose and try new things. We are definitely in favour of a culture of experimentation. Our culture is very much built on autonomous teams. The teams and their coaches have a very wide scope to decide on issues related to the working environment and well-being of team members, such as training, equipment and work ergonomics.

Especially in this era of teleworking, it is important that consultants have a good ergonomic framework to work from home. We maintain a sense of community through regular meetings, theme nights, in-house training and, during the covid period, we have continued to meet online.