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Featured Partner
Typically, we feature partners who collaborate with us on
software quality assurance projects. This month, in recognition of the
debut our evolving "Green Policy", we feature BeGreen, a company that is
supporting our efforts to offset carbon emissions. Effective immediately,
all of our clients will have the option, with each consulting or onsite training
engagement, to purchase carbon offsets.
BeGreen provides
high quality carbon offsets to companies looking to "go green" and neutralize
their impact on global warming. Carbon offsets are an easy way to invest
in eco-friendly projects like reforestation, renewable energy, and methane
capture, which help balance out the environmental impact of your business.
RBCS has just begun an exciting new partnership with BeGreen to offset the
carbon dioxide emissions from corporate air travel to client sites.
BeGreen offers a wide range of carbon offset services, including corporate
carbon footprint calculation, green ticketing for events, and a full online
eco-product store. |
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E-Learning Courses
ISTQB Test Engineering Foundation
US$ 999
ISTQB Advanced Test Analyst
US$ 999
Managing the Testing Process
US$ 999
Software Test
Estimation
US$ 499
Assessing Your Test Team
US$ 499
ISTQB Advanced Test Manager
US$ 999
Each course includes three months of on-line access, notesets,
exercises and either sample exam questions (for ISTQB course) or knowledge-check
questions (for other courses). ISTQB courses are written against the latest
ISTQB Foundation and Advanced syllabi released in 2007. Prices shown are
for asynchronous courses (pure e-learning). Blended courses (with a
facilitator) and custom training packages are also available.
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Preview the Foundation Level E-Learning Course for
Free!
If you would like to try the first two
chapters of our Test Engineering Foundation course without obligation and for
free, click here to access
it. |
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ISTQB Certified Tester
Training
December 8-12, 2008
Atlanta, GA
ISTQB Advanced Test Manager
$2,650
January 26-30, 2009
Denver, CO
ISTQB Advanced Test Manager
$2650
February 9-13, 2009
San Francisco, CA
ISTQB Advanced Test Analyst
$2,650
February 23-26, 2009
Austin, TX
Test Engineering
Foundation Level
$2,000
March 9-13, 2009
Toronto, Canada
ISTQB Advanced Test Analyst
$2,650 April 13-17, 2009
Atlanta, GA
ISTQB Advanced Test Analyst
$2,650 April 20-24, 2009
Toronto, Canada
ISTQB Advanced Test Manager
$2,650
May 11-15, 2009
San Diego, CA
ISTQB Advanced
Test Manager
$2,650
June 15-18, 2009
Washington DC
Test Engineer
Foundation Level
$2,000
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Other Public Courses
April 15-17
San Francisco, CA
Business Analysis Foundation
$2500
May 12-14, 2009
San Francisco, CA
Managing the Testing
Process
$2,500
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| Dear
Reader,
Welcome to the November newsletter. Once again, we have a jam-packed
grab-bag of stuff for you. First off, a guest article, written by Jim
Coplien, Gertrud Bjornvig, and Neil Harrison.
I first met Jim Coplien when I was doing a lot of consulting work in Israel
about five years ago. He and I shared some clients, and so we got a chance to
know each other. Jim is one of the smartest software engineering guys I've met.
We've stayed in touch over the years, and not long ago he asked me to
review an article he'd co-written about user stories and test-driven
development. It's brilliant. Now, thanks to Jim and his co-authors, we can
bring this article to you. If you're working in an Agile world, or if your
company is considering Agile development, you'll want to read this
article.
What else is there? A lot. How about another new
book? My sixth book, Advanced Software Testing: Volume 2,
is out in December.
What else? How about an environmental policy? We have been
saving water, energy and trees for years, and we're now making it a company
policy. You can support us in this effort: test smarter and get
greener at the same time.
What else? How about yet another client getting 100% pass rates on an ISTQB
exam? What else? How about another year of great training
opportunities on tap for you in 2009, without any onerous, ill-timed price
increases? What else? How about 100,000 ISTQB
certifications?
I could go on, but instead, I'll leave it to you to read
on...
Regards,
Rex Black,
President
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A Story about User Stories and
Test-Driven Development
by Gertrud Bj¯rnvig, James O. Coplien, and Neil
Harrison
[Note: To help give you a sense of the overall article, I've
edited the introductory text below to fit this space. The full, unedited
version is on our site.]
Welcome to TDD
Test-Driven Development, or TDD, is a term used for a
popular collection of development techniques in wide use in the Agile community.
While testing is part of its name, and though it includes tests, and though it
fits in that part of the life cycle usually ascribed to unit testing activity,
TDD pundits universally insist that it is not a testing technique, but rather a
technique that helps one focus one's design thinking. The idea is that you write
your tests first, and your code second. In this article, we explore some subtle
pitfalls of TDD that have come out of our experience, our consultancy on real
projects (all of the conjectured problems are things we have actually seen in
practice), and a bit of that rare commodity called common
sense....
Once upon a time, software development was doing more or
less O.K. when it employed Use Cases to help bridge the connection between
developers and end users... However, some organizations used Use Cases in
the worst possible way, specifying details of program task sequencing instead of
sticking to requirements.... On the other hand, the Extreme Programming
(XP) people, wanting to take things to the opposite extreme, turned the knob up
to 10 on simplicity. Use Cases gave way to Alistair's User Stories about 5 on
the knob which were further pared down to feature lists all the way up to 10....
At about the same time, the Smalltalk community found that
it was weak on testing [which] gave birth to a testing methodology using a
testing framework. As the XP world moved away from Smalltalk and towards Java,
the approach spawned a tool called JUnit.... System testing never was a big part
of the [XP] culture, and in general it became difficult to sell testing to the
XP constituency. Testing was usually left to second-class citizens or was
outsourced and, as such, was never a revenue-generating business. It didn't help
that testing wasn't "fun," and that "fun" is a core value of XP. The TDD
advocates motivate its value by telling us that TDD is fun not so much for its
value, but for novelty for its own sake. The testing framework and JUnit weren't
garnering consulting gigs any more....
Click here to read the rest of the
article. The original two-part version of this article was published in
Better Software magazine. Click here to read the first part
and click here for the second
part. |
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Advanced Software
Testing - Volume 2 to be Released in December
The second in the series of guides to the ISTQB Advanced Level
certification is due to be released in December, 2008. Advanced Software
Testing - Volume 2: Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an
Advanced Test Manager. Pre-order today! Expected ship date is December 30,
2008. This book teaches test managers what they need to know to achieve advanced
skills in test estimation, risk-based testing, test planning, results reporting,
and test team management.
As a side note, both Advanced Software Testing - Volume
1 and Advanced Software Testing - Volume 2 are currently
undergoing translation for publication in Japanese!
 Advanced Software Testing - Volume 2: Guide to the ISTQB Advanced
Certification as an Advanced Test Manager
by Rex Black
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2009 Courses at 2008
Prices!
This newsletter debuts our 2009 public course schedule. The 2009
schedule includes a new course, Business Analysis Foundation, a classic course,
Managing the Testing Process, and ISTQB certification courses. In consideration
of our commitment to continuing education and the troubled economic times that
we all face, we have decided not to increase tuition prices for any of our
courses. In addition, we will continue to offer our bring-a-buddy 10%
discount for two or more enrollments in a single course. Email us or call us at
+1-830-438-4830 to take advantage of this offer. Take a look at our
schedule and visit our training page for more in depth
information.
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Some of you may have heard Rex's sayings over the
years. We decided to coin them "Rexisms" for your reading pleasure. So here they
are to ponder - some useful aphorisms to help you plan, prepare, perform, and
perfect your testing activities, compiled from over a quarter-century of
software and systems engineering experience.
- "Until software test professionals can consistently help management to
make rational economic choices about quality, testing will remain marginalized
and underfunded."
- "Most test execution efforts that go over budget and
beyond schedule were pecked to death by ducks. In other words, it's
usually not one big problem or catastrophic event that results in the
budget-busting delay, but rather a series of small incidents like test
environment problems and late test releases. The smart test manager knows
how to count the ducks."
This month, we couldn't resist. Dena Pauletti, our
Technical Adminstrator, coined a useful phrase during a high
stress moment. We like to call it a "Denaism".
- "If there is an end to your to-do list, there is a
problem."
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The
ISTQB Grants More Than 100,000 Certifications
World-wide
The International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) announced
that, through their National Boards and Exam Boards, they have granted more than
100,000 certifications at the ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) and
ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Level (CTAL). "ISTQB software tester
certification is by far the most widely recognized and fastest-growing software
tester certification in the world," said Rex Black, CTAL, president of ISTQB.
"Reaching the 100,000 certification milestone validates ISTQB's leadership in
helping software testers to demonstrate their knowledge, skill and
professionalism." Click here to read the complete press
release. |
Great Scores, Again!
Hot on the heels of the July 2008 course, RBCS again delivered its Test
Engineering Foundation course to Intel, this time for a class of 30
people. Once again, we're proud to say that every attendee passed the
exam. Rex Black, RBCS President, said, "We are very pleased to see that we
have established a pattern of perfect pass rates at Intel. This is quite
exceptional, and speaks volumes about the intelligence and diligence of the
Intel attendees. We are also proud that our skilled and experienced
instructor, Jamie Mitchell, and our materials supported such a great outcome
again."
Ryan Hoppes, Manager of the Intel Mobile Wireless Group's Product
Validation organization, said, "We just completed the second session of the
ISTQB course and I am very proud to say that once again our organization
received a 100% certification/pass rate, validating the competitive advantage we
bring Intel in terms of product level validation. This is an extraordinary
achievement, and we are all very proud. As an organization we are now in
the process of taking improvement initiatives learned through this training and
applying it to our day to day work. We are all very excited to see
continued improvements in our coverage, repeatability, effectiveness, and
efficiency of our test
practices." |
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RBCS is Going Green!
We are "going green" but we need your help. We have always
made efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle. We recognize our
responsibility in reducing our impact on the environment and are taking our
efforts one step further. Now, all of our clients will have the option,
with each consulting or onsite training engagement, to purchase carbon
offsets. Carbon offsets support using clean technologies like
renewable energy, carbon sequestration or energy efficiency improvements to help
drive reductions in carbon emissions elsewhere. Purchase a few trees with
each engagement! We are also aggressively researching the options to
provide, on client request, electronic rather than paper versions of our
training materials.
In addition, we will continue our other environmental efforts that are
already in place, such as using partially-recycled water on our landscape,
employing only US Energy Star-rated servers, desktops, laptops, and printers in
our offices, and reusing and recycling all of our packing and shipping material
(and encouraging our clients to do so, too).
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