Rapid Software Testing Applied

This class helps you gain confidence that you can handle the complexity and ambiguity of real-life projects. This confidence comes ultimately from encountering a product and doing testing, while seeing what fellow students do. It is a good follow-on to Rapid Software Testing Explored, but the two classes may be taken in any order.

A second goal of this class is to help you recognize, by your own experiences, when testing should be a matter of deep investigation, rather than mere repetitious fact checking and shallow demonstration.

Rapid Software Testing Applied is for you if you take testing seriously and want to have pride in your work:

• If you are new to testing, then come experience it for the first time in a supervised, friendly environment. We teach in plain English. You will not be overwhelmed by unfamiliar vocabulary.
• If you are an experienced tester, the hands-on testing will challenge you to show off your skills and help you refine them. You will appreciate that RST is a practitioner-centered methodology– you are in control.
• If you are a technical tester, you can apply your coding and other technical skills to testing the product at hand.
• If you are a developer who does some testing, you will learn how your deep knowledge of product internals may help you or hinder you. You will also benefit from seeing how less technical people approach the same testing situations and find different bugs.
• If you manage people who test, you have the power to steer them and create an environment to help them do their most effective work. You will learn what good testing looks like, how to judge the progress of testing, and how to set high, yet reasonable expectations for the testing process.
• If you are a domain expert involved in user acceptance testing, this class will help you experience testing as an investigation process that puts your deep knowledge to work.
• If you work with people who test, you will gain an appreciation for the challenges of testing and discover what real testing looks like.

RSTA is taught Socratically, with exercises, discussions and illustrations of the RST methodology. Class discussions and debate address students’ questions and specific needs. We all learn from the unique perspective that each student brings to the class. We’ll cover:

• Experiencing testing as a process of open learning and investigation that focuses on risk
• Practicing with session-based testing and how to create test session reports
• Practicing the exploratory process of survey testing to get you up to speed quickly
• Practicing bug reporting
• Practicing systematically analyzing a product using the Heuristic Test Strategy Model
• Practicing risk analysis for better test strategy
• The difference between shallow testing and deep testing
• Categorizing testing time for better reporting and estimation
• Testing tempo and the difference between spontaneous and deliberative testing

This class is also offered in an online form, broadcasting live from the Pacific Time Zone on Orcas Island, Washington.

For the online version of the class, we use a MatterMost chatroom server for communication, a TikiWiki server to share classwork, and Zoom for the presentations. The online version consists of ten webinars and four work assignments. All student work, videos, and class materials are provided to students when the class is complete.

This class is not a passive lecture experience. There is a lecture in the morning and afternoon, during which you will interact with James and peer advisors in the chatroom. Each day there is a 90 minute homework assignment which is integral to the class experience, followed by an hour-long webinar where James reviews selected student work and bug reports. We strive to make this an interactive experience.

General Agenda for Day 1

   9:00-10:30am Webinar
  10:30-12:30am Student Work Assignment
   12:30-1:30pm Webinar
    1:30-2:00pm Break
    2:00-3:00pm Webinar

General Agenda for Day 2

    9:00-9:30am Webinar
   9:30-10:30am Student Work Assignment
  10:30-12:00pm Webinar
   12:00-2:00pm Student Work Assignment
    2:00-3:00pm Webinar
    3:00-3:30pm Break
    3:30-4:30pm Webinar

General Agenda for Day 3

   9:00-10:30am Webinar
  10:30-12:30am Student Work Assignment
   12:30-1:30pm Webinar
    1:30-2:00pm Break
    2:00-3:30pm Webinar

What about time zones?
If you are in a different time zone, that’s okay!

We will broadcast three webinars per day which will be recorded. If you don’t see them live (approximately 9am, 1230pm, and 230pm PST), you can watch them later. The briefings will be 60-90 minutes long. We will also be available via MatterMost, to some degree, outside of those times.

However, you don’t have to watch them at all. The status of the project will continuously be updated in RST Project Server, to which you will have access.

The instructor is available, as well as the online moderator, to answer questions you have during the course. No matter what time zone you are in, this event will be  a true testing experience!

How will you prepare:
We will be testing a real product. If you want to practice testing using tools, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with any tools you wish to use prior to the event. Although it is helpful to have taken the RST Explored class, it is not required. However, you may find it useful to review some of the materials in the Downloads section of the Satisfice web site.

Prerequisites:
You need to know how to write a bug report. So maybe read the Rapid Testing Guide to Making Good Bug Reports.
You should be comfortable with computers, of course.
You need to be able to write reasonably well in English.