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Featured Partner
Our featured
partner this month is Test4pro. Test4pro is a leading testing consulting service
and ISTQB certification provider in Scandinavia. Test4pro was founded by Steen
Lerche-Jensen, a member of the ISTQB. Their partnership with RBCS Inc. enables
them to offer both in house and public software testing certification
courses.
In the near
future, Test4pro will offer complete TMMI assessments for test
organizations. TMMI is a method of monitoring a test organization and
suggesting test process improvements. This will be an exciting addition to
Test4pro's services!
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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
September 22- September 26
Las Vegas, NV
Advanced Test Analyst
$2,650
September 29-October 3
NYC Area, New York
Advanced Test Manager
$2,650
October 20-October 24
Toronto, Canada
Advanced Test Analyst
$2,650
November 10-November 14
Washington DC
Advanced Test Manager
$2,650
December 1-December 5
Ontario, CA
Advanced Test Manager
$2,650
December 8-December 12
Atlanta, GA
Advanced Test Manager
$2,650
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Other Public Courses
October 21-23
Austin, TX
Performance Testing Immersion Workshop
$2,500
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| Dear Reader,
It's time again for a grab-bag of testing ideas. If you, like many
people these days, work on projects where some of the development is outsourced,
you'll want to read the article on the effect of component outsourcing on
quality risks and testing. If you are looking to strengthen your
testing, we have a brief article with three suggestions for you that will
take no more than two weeks to put into action. If you are interested in
the new ISTQB Advanced syllabus and how it can help make you or your testing
team better, you can come see me speak on this topic at the Fourth World
Congress on Software Quality, or, if you can't make that, you can read my
presentation below.
Speaking of the ISTQB Advanced syllabus, I have a new book coming out this
month, which I'll introduce in this newsletter. And speaking of
interesting conferences, don't forget about the Software Test and Performance
conference, which happens later this month.
For those of you in Northern Europe, we have a new partner to introduce to
you, Test4pro. If you're interested in ISTQB certification courses and
want to enjoy the comprehensive quality of our RBCS Foundation and Advanced
courses in Scandinavia, Test4pro can help with that. How good are those
courses, you might ask? Well, see below for some recent results.
I hope you find this latest newsletter a useful read.
Regards,
Rex Black,
President | |
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Component Outsourcing, Quality Risks,
and Testing:
Factors and Strategies for Project Managers
by Rex Black
More and more projects involve integration
of custom developed or commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, rather than
in-house development or enhancement of software. In effect, these two
approaches constitute direct or indirect outsourcing of some or all of the
development work for a system, respectively.
While some project
managers see such outsourcing of development as reducing the overall risk, each
integrated component can bring with it significantly increased risks to system
quality. In this article, I'll explain the factors that lead to
these risks, and then strategies you can use to manage them.
I'll
illustrate the factors and the strategies with a hypothetical project. In
this project, assume you are the project manager for a bank that is creating a
Web application that allows homeowners to apply for a home equity loan on the
Internet. You have two component vendors. You buy a COTS database
management system from one vendor. You hire an outsourced custom
development organization to develop the Web pages, the business logic on the
servers, and the database schemas and commands to manage the data. Let's
see how you can recognize the factors that create quality risks, and the
strategies you can use to manage those risks.
Click here to see the rest of this
article in its entirety.
If you're pressed for time and would like to read a condensed
version of this article, click here to read the edited version that appeared
originally in Software Test and Performance
magazine.
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Advanced Software
Testing Volume 1: Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an Advanced Test
Analyst.
by Rex Black
Release Date: Sept 15,
2008
This book is written for the test analyst who wants to achieve advanced
skills in test analysis, design, and execution. With a hands-on, exercise-rich
approach, this book teaches you how to define and carry out the tasks required
to put a test strategy into action. Learn how to analyze the system, taking into
account the user's quality expectations. Additionally, learn how to evaluate
system requirements as part of formal and informal reviews, using an
understanding of the business domain to determine requirement validity. You will
find new ways to analyze, design, implement, and execute tests, using risk to
determine the appropriate effort and priority for tests. You will see how to
report on testing progress and provide necessary evidence to support your
evaluations of system quality.
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How the ISTQB Advanced
Level Syllabus Works for You
The International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB) has
already effected profound change in the software testing field, with almost
100,000 people having attained Foundation certification. But a Foundation
certification is just that: only a Foundation. With the release of the new
Advanced syllabus in October 2007, the ISTQB has expanded and improved the next
rung on the ladder of test professionalism. In September, Rex Black, President
of the ISTQB, is giving two tutorials to show how the ISTQB Advanced syllabus
can guide you, your testing colleagues, and your organization toward better
testing, reduced risk, and higher quality. The first will occur in Seoul, Korea,
in partnership with STEN. The second will occur in
Bethesda, Maryland, at the Fourth World Congress for Software
Quality. If you can't attend, you can click here to read the slides from
this
tutorial.
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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.
- "Just because a failure is irreproducible does not mean the bug is not worth
fixing. It is a bug triage worst practice to use the difficulty of
reproducing the failure as an excuse to defer fixing a bug with intermittent
symptoms."
- "To paraphrase Lord Kelvin, a test team has little insight if they have no
metrics. However, there are plenty of test teams who, through the wrong
choice of metrics, have plenty of metrics, but no insight."
- "Know the cost of a bug during testing. Know the cost of a bug in
production. If you know these things, you'll know how much money testing saves
the company and how to decide when enough testing has
occurred."
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Two Weeks to Better
Testing!
Got two weeks? Get better at testing! Check out three fast,
high-value, low-pain ways you can improve your testing operation in Rex's
article, "Two Weeks to Better Testing this Summer," in the latest edition of
Testing Experience magazine. Click here to
read. |
Great Scores!
Attendees of our ISTQB Certified
Tester courses have had such great scores recently that we thought it was worth
mentioning here!
In two of our Test Engineering
Foundation Courses that were run in July, one in a pubic venue and another
onsite for our client, CA, one well-prepared attendee in each course scored the
elusive perfect grade, 100%. Laurel Becker, RBCS Vice President, said, "A
score of 100% is spectacular, not to mention rare! It's another nice plus
that we had a 100% pass rate in our public course."
RBCS recently delivered its
ISTQB-accredited Test Engineering Foundation course for a class of 21 people at
Intel in the United States. We're proud to say that every attendee passed
the exam. Rex Black, RBCS President, said, "RBCS has been teaching ISTQB
Foundation courses for about five years now, and we've had literally thousands
of people around the world take our course. While our pass rates are
usually better-than-average, it's quite gratifying to have a 100% pass rate in a
class of this size, particularly since the exam difficulty was increased in
January 2008. We at RBCS are proud that our fine instructor, Judy McKay,
and our materials proved helpful to these dedicated Intel employees in reaching
this
milestone." |
Software
Test and Performance Conference
September 24-26
Boston, MA
Join hundreds of other software developers, development managers, test/QA
managers and senior test professionals at the Fall 2008 Software Test &
Performance Conference! This year, the conference is taking place September
24-26 at the Marriott Boston Copley in Boston, MA. More than 70 classes and full
day tutorials will cover software test/QA and performance issues across the
entire application life cycle. Register online
today! |
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Improving Software Quality Worldwide
Presided over by Rex Black, ISTQB President, the International Software
Testing Qualifications Board meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria in July was
attended by many of the delegates from the National Boards. As
always, the meeting resulted in significant progress in enhancing the ISTQB
Certified Tester
programs. | |
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