BBST® __ Black Box Software Testing

Altom, in collaboration with Kaner, Fiedler & Associates is offering a new generation of public BBST® courses. Throughout the course series, which uses the most up-to-date course materials created by Cem Kaner, we strive to offer an experience that facilitates enhanced learning by providing continuous individual feedback, as well as interactive grading.

The courses are delivered online, using the popular learning platform Canvas, and are thus accessible to a wide range of people, regardless of their location and timezone.

The courses include video lectures, quizzes, homework of various kinds, and a final exam. All of the homework and the exam are reviewed by instructors, and individual or classwide feedback is provided.

Each course is carefully designed to build up skills which will be used in subsequent courses, so each one is a prerequisite for the next. This way we aim at providing the most effective learning experience for our students and helping them practice their skills so that they are ready to apply them when faced with challenges in their testing work.

Successful graduation of a course is rewarded with a completion certificate.

1. BBST® Foundations

The first course in the series is BBST® Foundations, which is organized around four critical challenges in software testing:

• What is the mission of a testing effort and how does the project strategy help achieve that mission?

• How can a tester determine whether or not the program has passed a test?

• What are the key challenges in developing and using software metrics?

• How can testers measure the amount of testing that has been done and estimate the amount of testing that remains and how can we decide when to stop testing?

26 Feb – 25 Mar 2017 14 May – 10 June 2017

20 Aug – 16 Sept 2017 12 Nov – 9 Dec 2017

Schedule

Don’t let the “Foundations” in the course title fool you. The course is not designed exclusively for the beginning tester. It provides deep insight into core concepts and common challenges in testing. Even experienced testers will discover many valuable things to take away from this course.

2. BBST® Bug Advocacy

BBST® Bug Advocacy helps testers develop skills in effective bug reporting. Some of these skills are primarily technical, such as troubleshooting failures and isolating failure-producing configurations.

Many bugs are left unfixed because they were not presented persuasively. The course applies lessons from sales, psychology and law to help you understand how to:

Schedule 09 Apr – 6 May 2017 13 Aug – 9 Sept 2017

• present your reports more credibly and more persuasively

• assess the quality of troubleshooting and communication of reports written by staff or colleagues.

This hands-on course involves participants in real-life interactions with an open-source software project so they can experience a realistic work environment. Then, in the privacy and safety of the course learning environment, they will give and receive constructive feedback on their contributions to the open-source project.

3. BBST® Test Design

The third course in the series is BBST® Test Design. After having been supplied an overview of seventy-five test techniques, the students will do a deeper analysis of six of them:

Schedule 1 Oct – 28 Oct 2017

• risk-based testing

• scenario testing

• spec-based testing

• function testing and testing tours

• domain testing

• combinatorial testing

All these lay a solid foundation for context-appropriate design of your tests.

Benefits of taking the BBST® Courses

The courses are held online, so flexibility is one big advantage.

In these courses, the instructors provide a substantial amount of individual feedback for the students, in addition to the classwide feedback and interactive grading sessions. All these facilitate a personalized learning experience.

The courses are delivered by dedicated instructors with a strong testing background. All our instructors teach the course along with Cem Kaner and receive feedback from him on their contribution, helping to improve their skills and the value of the feedback students get.

We use up-to-date course materials, created and developed by Cem Kaner. Students also receive a workbook authored by Cem Kaner and Rebecca Fiedler.

Students will get to test and work on different assignments with other student peers, as well as become part of the larger BBST® students group.

We aim at giving students practical ideas they can apply, as well as raising their motivation to new heights. It’s a great opportunity to power up their testing passion!

Testimonials

This is a must-do course for personal development, focusing on black box testing and not only. — Andrei Pirvulescu, QTeam Software Solutions

This is a course that takes a lot of dedicated time and effort. Most articles and papers included for the students can be used to make good arguments when discussing testing in your everyday life. It is a good start for testers who want to be professional testers. — Martin Jansson, Qualityminds

Brilliant context-driven testing foundation course, in-depth material to challenge you and help you learn. — Doug Buck, Games Workshop Ltd

Mind-opening experience, providing a great foundation for future development in the field of software testing. —Pavel Zechmeister, Summit Media

Content Owners

Cem Kaner is a Professor of Software Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology. He teaches and does research in software engineering, primarily software testing, software metrics and computer law and ethics. His career is centered around a consistent theme: enhancing the satisfaction and safety of software customers, users and developers.

Rebecca Fiedler is an educator and a lifelong learner. She has spent decades teaching students of all ages - from kindergarten to university. In the testing community, she works with Cem Kaner on the BBST® online professional development courses. She is a regular attendee and presenter at the Workshop on Teaching Software Testing and has had numerous presentations at national and international conferences in education and education technology.

Instructors

Alexandra Casapu does software testing at Altom. The environment she works in has facilitated her learning on the importance of context in testing, the exploratory approach, and caring a great deal about improving her testing skills.In 2014 she became an instructor for the commercial version of the BBST® courses, enjoying the great experience of going in depth with valuable learning material and having more interactions with fellow testers.

Ru Cindrea is a senior test consultant and managing partner at Altom, focusing on test management and mobile software testing. With over 10 years of experience, she believes all testing is exploratory and she is currently working with the Finnish testing community on building a strong group of testing professionals.

Instructors

Gabriel Dobritescu has been a software tester for over 10 years, working in a variety of testing roles across a number of different industries. He believes that testers should be professional learners, relentless in their quest to improve their testing skills and bring more value through their work.Lately he has been focusing on better understanding how people learn, how the brain works and how we can become better at teaching testing to other people.

For the past 7 years, Alexandru Rotaru has been working with Altom. Being a small company, his role and tasks vary a lot. He works as a test engineer / test lead at customer’s site on fixed length projects, he does administrative tasks, interviews and training sessions. He interacts a lot with current and potential clients to try to understand their needs and problems. This makes for a great learning experience!

Instructors

Zoltán Molnár has more than 17 years of testing experience in different roles, mostly in the telecommunications area.He enjoys the intellectual richness behind context-driven testing and fully agrees with that testing is not merely a mechanical, technical work, but a complex, cognitive process that is fairly affected by social sciences.

Oana Casapu has been working as a tester, test manager and project manager on a variety of projects for over 10 years.Her focus lately has been on contributing to the testing community. Together with her fellow testers, she organizes the monthly meetups in Cluj-Napoca and facilitates the events for the Tabara de Testare community.

Instructors

Ray Oei is currently team leader QA at Innovation Labs by AVG and has been active in the IT field for over 25 years, of which several years as trainer and coach. He is a founding member of DEWT and has been a speaker at several test conferences. He is greatly interested in the human factor of testing as well as the challenges in investigating software in different contexts. He enjoys teaching and helping people learn more about the beauty of testing.

Lalit Bhamare is a passionate context-driven tester. He is chief editor and co-founder of popular testing magazine “Tea-time with Testers”. Lalit’s specialties are his test management and coaching skills. He has taught over 20 full-day RST classes at Barclays and regularly assists James Bach in his RSTA online class. Lalit feels that his connect with the testing community and passion for continuous development of the software testing field help him contribute best in organisations he works for.

Altom BBST® Classes in 2017Foundations 26 Feb – 25 Mar 2017

Bug Advocacy 09 Apr – 6 May 2017

Foundations 14 May – 10 June 2017

Bug Advocacy 13 Aug – 9 Sept 2017

Foundations 20 Aug – 16 Sept 2017

Test Design 1 Oct – 28 Oct 2017

Foundations 12 Nov – 9 Dec 2017

About Altom

Altom is a Romanian software testing company specialized in testing services, testing consultancy and testing training.

We are a team of skilful and enthusiastic testers keen on exploring applications in all their visible and hidden corners to provide relevant information to the client.

We consult clients on how to approach difficult testing problems and help them provide a structure to their testing activities.

We promote context-driven testing, exploratory testing, innovative testing techniques and development of advanced software testing skills through our online courses BBST®, on-site trainings and other software testing workshops, events and collaborations.

As part of our training program, we have organized multiple on-site trainings in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Helsinki with groundbreaking software testing consultants: James Bach, Michael Bolton and Maaret Pyhäjärvi. We also offer courses developed internally: Examine your testing skills, Automation in Testing using Selenium and Hands-on BDD.

Get in touch with us at training@altom.ro