I’ve just claimed my ISTQB foundation certificate last week. Hurray, a piece of paper that shows that I ‘know’ testing terminology! Jokes aside, I am looking for a new course or cert to go on. Having read the gigantic post Are software Testing Certifications worth it?, the two that stick out to me are BBST and RST.
BBST Foundations: I’ve read pdfs and watched some of the videos on the free site maybe 1 or 2 months ago? This was more personal and informal endeavour, so I have yet concretely put any of the material into practice.
Recently, I saw their website advertising online courses on https://bbst.courses/. Since I know that the materials are free, is it worth doing the actual course? I am not sure what it will add, it’s mostly the assignments/exams that I’m paying for? Can anyone here share their experience with me if they’ve already done it?
The videos on the free site are from 10 years ago, kinda old. Sure I understand that advice can be timeless, I don’t disagree. But a bit of reviewing and tidying up every now and then? The bbst.courses blog post says they’ve reviewed the content but the videos look exactly the same to me lol, all they have done is change out the slides.
RST: Haven’t read much into Bach yet other than the heuristics model. But he sounds like a cool guy and I do want to go on RST explored at some point. Too bad the one coming up clashes with work times and I probably need to talk to my boss about whether he would allow me to do that. His website https://www.satisfice.com/ also looks prettier.
What do you think? Teach myself with free material for a while or fry my brain with an intensive course?
P.S: Sorry if I put this in the wrong place, I am not quite sure which category to put this in so I just picked Testing Thoughts.
Sure, those courses are great for in-general testing activities, but wouldn’t work at all if you wanted to learn the details of automation.
There are great introduction courses to a large variety of concepts on MoT, so you may want to (if you haven’t already) go pro for a month and see what they have to offer.
We don’t reject bugs here when people post in the wrong place. Heather normally just moves things to their correct places without anyone noticing.
Very valid points. I had access to MOT pro a long long time ago, you can get overwhelmed with great content in there, and definitely worth going pro for a month just to drink some of it in.
I favor the BBST Course series. With every course, I came away with practical information that was immediately applicable in my testing.
I took Foundations and Bug Advocacy (my favorite) on-line and as a part of a group. This is a time-intensive method and being planful helps.
I did Test Design as independent study, and was a part of the pilot group for the Domain Testing course.
I encourage you to find a way that fits your learning style.
RST courses are always interesting, even to re-take.
In January I took the RST Applied when we investigate a small Chrome extension that suggested improvement on Gmail messages. It may seem simple, but a group of 40 people looked at it from all possible angles for 3 days and many things were still to investigate. The authors were invited and we had chats with them as you would do with the developers in your company.
Product Coverage Outlines, mindmaps, bug reporting, etc. Everything reviewed by James Bach and other TAs and afterward shared with the other participants, for download of the video lectures and textual material (chats and documents).
Hi all, I decided to go on the BBST foundations course. It will be intensive but I think it will be worth it. If you have done it before, can you give me any tips? I’ve seen the free materials before as I previously posted, there is a lot to take in so I wonder if you have any study tips etc.
Congrats! You won’t be sorry. While the material and videos have an academic feel to them, I found the information very practical.
I recall that I learned the most when attempting to answer the review questions. After watching a video and reading the recommended material, I would attempt to answer as many as I could. It was not possible to answer all of them until completing an entire section.
After answering the review questions, I found it helpful to review them and determine if I could improve my reply. For me, a little time away helped reflect on the information and I might change or improve a response. It took a bit of time to do that but it was time well spent.
Lastly, the review questions were a great preparation for the quizzes for me.
I look forward to it and hope it will enforce my learning. By the way, do you have any of the review questions still by any chance or any materials that you helped you? I still have a week and a half before the course starts. I asked for help from the BBST instructor and they just sent me recommended readings.
Ok recommended readings are good but without the review questions or any guidance, I don’t even know how I should process or think about what I read. I need more advice than ‘just read it’, I want to know how it relates to the course.
This is the problem. Since they have not opened up the course to me yet, I wonder if you can let me see a little bit behind the curtain. At least I will know how to think through the recommended material, rather than stabbing in the dark.
I looked through my old laptop and found review questions for Bug Advocacy and Test Design. However, they are from 2012 and may not be as helpful as the current material.
I presume you have been sent readings for the first course, Foundations. I struggled in that course because I was new to testing, and because my perceptions of testing were challenged. It was helpful to have peers who were taking the course at the same time because we could explore the information and topics (on line or in person). The quiz questions also helped drive the conversations and focus on the readings.
I thought the information and experience in Foundations were very valuable but the struggle was also part of the learning. The struggle is also what I liked about the BBST courses. They are not about “how to test” rather they are more about “how to think about what and how you think about testing”.