Exercises that exercise a testers mind - Workshop

Updated: 7th August 2008

Do you drive a car/bike?
Did you learn it by sitting in a class?
Did you become better at it without practicing it?

Now you know what this class is about.

History of the class

This is not an experimental class or a pilot program. James Bach and Michael Bolton, two great testers and philosophers of North America with other expert testers they collaborate, invented and have been inventing different ways to educate testers and help them get better at it. This gave rise to a philosophy, approach, heuristics, oracles, techniques, exercises, mnemonics, methodology, skills … combined to call Rapid Software Testing.

Rapid Software Testing is a brand name of Expert Testing. James Bach and Michael Bolton have visited India often in the past teaching Rapid Software Testing to organizations a couple of top IT organizations in India.

While the certification course make a tester to sit in a class where he never even gets to see even a video of an expert driving a car ( an expert doing testing ), Rapid Software Testing ( not a certification program ) a skill development and nurture program, gets a tester on the driving seat, makes him to drive, explore, identify mistakes, suggests corrections, makes him drive again and keep doing it for a life time. RST has been self realization program for some testers in the world.

Why would your competitor love this program?

• More or less your organizations and theirs hires a bunch of certified or non certified testers who have ( or would be) been certified not because they know to drive ( test ) better but because they were able to crack 50 multiple choice questions out of 983294839483294893489328493849348 billion possible challenging questions in software testing that you want them to solve.

• With increasing complexity of products, increasing need to demonstrate human resource skills and attract customers, your competitors have something to brag about that you might not have.

• They would be happy that their testers know more approaches to testing that might result in cost effective value addition to potential customers. ( Ask your testers if they know the value of each test they are executing )

• What more a competitor wants than to know that they have more competent resources than that of your organization?

There are only two possible choices you can make:

1. Get this training to your staff and put yourself in much competent position.
2. Watch your customer grow competent and wonder how they got there. ( because you wouldn’t know if your competitor took this program )

We think the second choice would be very expensive but we wouldn’t mind that happening if you are OK with that.

About the driver

Pradeep Soundararajan, is an independent test consultant. He coaches, consults, speaks, writes, tests, manages, thinks on software testing and problem solving. He is an international invited speaker. His testing has had an influence from James Bach Bach, Michael Bolton, Jerry Weinberg, Cem Kaner and Ben Simo.

He has tested over 100+ products in the last 6 years. Some of the products he tested ranges: Desktop Applications, Bluetooth communication systems, Wireless and Embedded Multimedia Systems, Pocket PC and Mobile Phone applications, Auction systems, E-learning products, Online Management product, Outsource Relationship Management solutions, Telephony systems, Online applications for Finance and Banking products, Anti Virus and Anti Spam product, Project Management Solutions, Call centre applications, Billing solutions etc…

Some testers he coached have surprised their management with hundreds of bugs that weren’t found earlier.

-- Pradeep Soundararajan - http://testertested.blogspot.com - pradeep.srajan@gmail.com - +91-98451-76817

"Pradeep's first language is not English--his first language appears to be testing." -- Michael Bolton