CAST was buzzing with talk of the BBST online software testing courses. The coming months have opportunities for everyone – including YOU – to get involved!

The big news from the Education SIG is that Test Design, our newest BBST course, will be available in Q1 of 2012. Are you ready? You must successfully complete both BBST Foundations and BBST Bug Advocacy before taking BBST Test Design.

Never taken a BBST course? Start with Foundations 2.0. Check your personal calendar and visit the Schedule page (http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/training/schedule/) to find one that’s right for you.
Still need Bug Advocacy? It will be offered one more time  – from September 11 to October 8, 2011 – before Test Design is released. Sign up for Bug Advocacy at https://www.123signup.com/register?id=vfvcr for the low cost of $200.
Here’s what former Bug Advocacy students had to say about the Bug Advocacy course: 

“Now, I know why my bugs were deferred. Bring it on. My bug reports are stronger.”

“The bug advocacy course was practical and gave powerful tools and concepts for immediate use at work. Its relevance in testing is immense and the real life exercises used in the course amplify the learning several times. In Juran’s assessment of quality as ‘Fitness for use’, this course fits the industry’s needs completely.”

“BBST Bug Advocacy takes learning about testing to another level. It is filled with practical exercises that I could use right away in my task as a tester . . . I recommend it to anyone who is serious about software bugs.”

“The BBST courses are truly excellent, and of course, an unbelievable value. As a hands-on tester and test manager, I often have to manage PM / customer expectations as well as train and mentor my testing teams. As a consultant I often have to articulate the challenges and benefits of testing to my clients. In this context – even putting aside the significant personal learning benefits of these courses – they deliver immense value: the clarity and power of the arguments they present is exemplary.” – Iain McCowatt

“The BBST Bug advocacy course was extremely rich in new ideas for me. I though I had a fairly good approach to bug management, but the bug advocacy course has given me a whole new perspective on how to report and manage bugs.” — Mark Irvine

“All testers – those who are new to testing and those who have been testing for years – will gain skills and “take home” knowledge to share with project teams and apply immediately in order to improve the effectiveness of their day-to-day work. I can’t wait for my next BBST course!”

And, here’s what Cem Kaner says about the class:

Bug reports are not just neutral technical reports. They are persuasive documents. The key goal of the bug report author is to provide high-quality information, well written, to help stakeholders make wise decisions about which bugs to fix. Key aspects of the content of this course include:

  • Defining key concepts (such as software error, quality, and the bug processing workflow)
  • the scope of bug reporting (what to report as bugs, and what information to include)
  • Bug reporting as persuasive writing
  • Bug investigation to discover harsher failures and simpler replication conditions
  • Excuses and reasons for not fixing bugs
  • Making bugs reproducible
  • Lessons from the psychology of decision-making: bug-handling as a multiple-decision process dominated by heuristics and biases.
  • Style and structure of well-written reports
Would you like to get involved as a BBST Instructor? The new online Instructor’s course runs from October 12 through October 29. Sign up today!