The AST - BBST Foundations - Part 3

Well, that's the course completed. 4 challenging, thought-provoking, but enjoyable weeks now behind me and a wealth of new knowledge to build on and apply in future testing challenges. The course has certainly highlighted some personal development areas for me, which, top of the pile, is a desire in me to start to form some kind of coding knowldge outside of web-based stuff (note: this desire was there to some degree before taking this course).

The final week was a busy time - we (myself and the group in which I'd been placed) completed our mission assignment and the feedback we received was generally positive. Once that had been completed it was on with the final exam, which meant a final 2-3 days of exam cram before another 2-3 days of writing the final exam (approx 10 questions which can be completed as and when time allowed, but with a given deadline). The course gives you a chance to practice answering these questions prior to taking the final exam and I'd tried to do this with all the questions but didn't find the time in the end; this resulted in some exam questions requiring some dedicated time to answering due to the thinking required.

Once the exams were completed, each student is required to peer-review the exams of 2 other delegates which is an interesting challenge in itself, and is also something which you can fail the course on, if you don't perform to a sufficient level. It's worth noting that a key aspect of this course is to show students how to succeed when taking online classes, and therefore it allows the instructors to spend less time focussing on this in future, more difficult AST courses.

I often find, when reflecting on courses, that it can be difficult to summarise what you've learnt and I found the task no different with this course until this morning, when I sat with one of our newer testers for 15 minutes. It was only then, that I found myself explaining the impossibility of complete testing, and touching on some of the other aspects of the course that it dawned on me exactly what I'd learnt.

So, what do I think I've learnt?

- I've learnt about the important of critical reading, and how that's applied to software testing
- I've learnt how to discuss, and summarise, some of the key differences between certain testing techniques
- I've learnt how to present written information in a concise format,which is easy to read and to understand
- I've learnt about the impossibility of complete coverage
- I've learnt how your test strategy needs to reflect your overall test mission, and information objectives which help you achieve that mission
- I've learnt about ways in which you can help understand if a test has passed, or if it's failed
- I've learnt about ways in which you can "sell" a defect to a developer
- I've learnt so much more than what I've put above, but alas, I can't go on forever...

In summary, if you get an opportunity I'd recommend you take this course. You will learn something new, you will get to talk to new and different people about software testing, and you will identify some personal development needs; all of which, given you get this for the cost of the ASTs annual membership (£50ish), makes for a very valuable and interesting learning experience.