This is a reasonable question. Our classes require your money and your time. You may wonder if the experience is worth it (and if you are the kind of student of testing that we hope you are, you surely will). After all, you have options:
- Read a book. (Michael and I recently wrote one!)
- Learn on the job.
- Watch free YouTube videos.
- Take one of those $25 classes from an online learning website. (We don’t think they are any good, so we will not include any links.)
Each of those options has its merits, and is certainly less expensive than taking an RST class. Therefore, the burden is on us to explain why you should come our way. For your consideration, here are our reasons:
- Energy. Our training is social. Social engagement is energizing. Of course, how you participate in the class is always up to you and under your control.
- Community. You will encounter fellow learners. During exercises, you will see how they answer the challenges. Sometimes that’s even more interesting than what the instructors do.
- Grounding. Exercises help develop actual skill. We work not only with explicit knowledge, but also with tacit knowledge that grows through each experience.
- Interaction. You will have the opportunity to test and challenge the material. The instructors encourage you to doubt what we say, and to compare and contrast it with other approaches and ideas. We will respond to you.
- Explication. The classes demystify vocabulary and concepts that may otherwise seem strange to you.
- Specifics. You may air your questions about specific contexts and applications of the material that we cover. We will even meet privately with you, if necessary, if you want to ask about matters that may apply only to your current project.
- Authenticity. Taking our classes creates a relationship with the instructors, who are prominent voices in the history of software testing (try asking ChatGPT about us). As the authors of the material, you are getting it right from the source.
- Credibility. If you are a serious student of the craft, and you want to be credible in your analyses of different approaches to testing, then there is no substitute for taking our training.
- Agency. Our classes are designed to help you feel ownership of the material, so that you can confidently modify it and apply it, as needed.
- Freshness. Our latest material is in our classes, which we are constantly updating.
We teach our classes privately as well as publicly. If your company wants a private class, we can customize it for you. For private online classes, we allow you to keep the videos for a nominal fee. For public classes, the videos are not available (except for the Rapid Software Testing Applied class).