RBCS Podcast

The ISTQB tester certification program has had a tremendous positive impact on the software testing world, with over 300,000 certifications issued around the world.  Perhaps you’re considering getting an ISTQB certification, but have questions.  What’s going on with the ISTQB?  How does it operate?  Where to the exams come from?  How does the ISTQB certification fit into a tester’s career path?  What’s the international profile of the ISTQB program?  As an active volunteer in the ISTQB program and former President of the ISTQB and ASTQB, Rex can answer your questions.  Join Rex for an overview of what you might want to know about the ISTQB before committing your time and energy to the certification, and for an opportunity to ask questions. 

Many smart, otherwise-capable testers sabotage their own careers by committing one or more of the deadly sins of testing.  1.      Irrelevance/redundancy 2.      Ignorance of relevant skills or facts 3.      Obstructionism 4.      Adversarialism 5.      Nit-picking 6.      Blindness to project/organizational priorities 7.      Last-moment-ism Are you your own worst enemy?  Come join us to discuss these seven deadly sins with Rex. You might recognize your own behaviors, or behaviors of others on your test team. Rex gives examples of these behaviors through case studies, and tells you how to stop the behaviors and solve the problems those behaviors have created. For sinners and non-sinners alike, Rex offers ideas on how to become a testing saint.

Many organizations use outside service providers to perform some or even all of their testing.  Some attendees of these free webinars work for such service providers.  Whichever camp you’re in, you might need to know whether the services being provided are really meeting the needs.  Can you measure success?  Yes, and it’s easier than you might think.  There are a dozen concrete measures of the effectiveness, efficiency, innovation, responsiveness, and attitude associated with these services. In this free webinar, Rex will discuss these metrics, helping both sides of the service relationship do a better job.

You can often learn a lot more from a failed project than you can from one that succeeds.  So, in this free webinar, Rex offers detailed case studies of three projects that failed—even though they could have succeeded.  Each project was very different, but common themes emerge: earlier testing, better quality throughout the project, tighter collaboration between testers and other stakeholders, and better vendor quality management.  Rex will discuss how to you can learn the lessons that could have saved these projects so you can avoid being a profile in failure on your next project.

You hear people talk about “coverage” a lot in testing, but what exactly do they mean?  Three different people could mean three—or more—different things when they use this word.  It’s not that those different meanings are wrong, they’re just—different.  Test coverage is a powerful and important topic, and it’s time we all got clear on what it means and how to use it.  So, in this free webinar, Rex will explore the various dimensions of test coverage and how you can make those dimensions work for you on your next testing project.

Lots of organizations are adopting Agile.  Some of these organizations are finding practical ways to integrating testing into Agile lifecycles.  In this presentation, Rex will address challenges and opportunities associated with Agile, different ways of adapting Agile lifecycles and the testing within those lifecycles, and how Agile differs from traditional lifecycles.  We’ll examine tools and metrics for Agile projects.  We’ll address whether Agile can be used for outsourced projects.  We’ll look at different options for organizing test teams on Agile projects, and why only some of these options can work.  Rex will offer his thoughts on Agile and quality, and what skills and personalities work best in Agile projects. In this free webinar, Rex will discuss these points and more, giving you a better shot at Agile testing success.

The International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB) has already effected profound change in the software testing field, with over 250,000 people having attained Foundation certification. But a Foundation certification is just that: only a Foundation. The ISTQB Advanced program is achieving great success, with tens of thousands of people getting one or more of the Advanced certifications. Now the ISTQB has made that program even better, releasing a new version, more streamlined, more market-friendly version of the Advanced syllabus in October 2012. In this webinar, Rex Black, co-author of the new Advanced syllabus, will explain what’s new and what’s great about the ISTQB Advanced syllabus, and how it can guide you, your testing colleagues, and your organization toward better testing, reduced risk, and higher quality.

This is a repeat presentation of one of our most popular webinars, which had over 1,600 registrants. If you missed it the first time, you can catch it now, and hear about how test estimation is done, using techniques that work in both traditional and Agile lifecycles. How many testers do we need? How many test cases do we need? How many bugs will testing find? How long will testing take? Those are good questions, but those questions are often hard to answer. In this webinar, drawn from three decades of industry experience and materials in his best-selling book Managing the Testing Process, 3rd edition, Rex will discuss fundamental techniques for test estimation. Join in the discussion after the initial presentation, and ask Rex about the challenges you face with test estimation.   

This is another webinar in a series on advanced software testing, excerpted from Rex’s popular books, Managing the Testing Process, third edition, and Advanced Software Testing: Volume II, a book for test managers. In this webinar, Rex will discuss test policies, strategies and plans. We’ll cover various topics that test managers must consider to make sure that test goes as smoothly as possible. What should testing accomplish and how do we recognize success? How should we approach testing? What specific activities need to be planned for each project? What risks can affect testing, and how can we manage those risks in our test plans? How does lifecycle affect these documents? Join this webinar, illustrated with examples throughout, to learn techniques that you can apply to your work right away.

Earlier this year, Rex gave a webinar on how Agile lifecycles create opportunities for testing. Four years ago, Rex gave a presentation on the testing challenges of Agile, first in Auckland, New Zealand and later at various locations around the world. So, what’s changed in the last four years? In this webinar, Rex will revisit his presentation on Agile testing challenges. How are we, as testing professionals, doing in terms of surmounting these challenges? What remains to be done? How can you recognize and manage these challenges in your Agile projects? In this free webinar, Rex will discuss these points and more, helping you be more effective in Agile projects.

This is another webinar in a series on advanced software testing, excerpted from Rex’s popular book, Advanced Software Testing: Volume 2, a book for test managers. In this eighth webinar, Rex will discuss the use of reviews to improve requirements and design specifications, including in Agile lifecycles. We’ll cover The most efficient quality assurance techniques known, Reviews of traditional requirements, use cases, user stories, design specifications, and other descriptions of how the system works and how it does what it does. Join this webinar, illustrated with examples throughout, to learn a technique that you can apply to your work right away.

Are test management and quality management the same? Are they different? How are they related? Many people are confused about these questions, and that confusion results in many problems for test teams around the world. Rex Black has seen that confusion first-hand, and has helped clients resolve the problems that confusion can cause. In this talk, Rex will provide five key lessons in how to recognize the confusion and resolve problems, illustrated with case studies throughout. You will leave this session ready to provide clear leadership in test management and quality management, and to help your organization achieve successful testing and quality.

Some testing teams see themselves as quality cops or process cops, there to enforce entry criteria, methodology standards, work product delivery dates, and other policies on developers, business analysts, sales and marketing staff, and other project team members. While this can be valuable and appropriate in some organizations, most of the time it is not a winning position for test teams. What we see with our clients is that test teams who deliver the most value are those that focus on being a trusted partner to their stakeholders, helping them deliver the highest quality software and systems on time and within budget. In this webinar, illustrated with case studies of successful and unsuccessful test teams, Rex will explain how you can transform your test team into a trusted partner.

In 2003, Rex’s book, Critical Testing Processes, came out. In it, Rex introduced a test process framework based on criticality, and focused on business value. With the 2012 publication of Rex’s new e-book, Improving the Testing Process, Rex provides a clear set of guidelines on how to use the Critical Testing Processes framework to assess and improve your testing processes. It includes questions to ask and metrics to evaluate. In this webinar, Rex will explain the evaluation guidelines and how to apply them to your organization. You’ll come away ready to get started on bottom-line focused, data-driven improvements to your testing processes.

This webinar will give attendees an overview of the significant test strategies in use by testers in various industries and business domains around the world.  We’ll examine: analytical strategies (where testers analyze requirements or risks to identify the test conditions to cover);  model-based strategies (where testers develop a model of the environment in which the system exists, the inputs and conditions to which the system is subjected, and how the system should behave); methodical strategies (where testers use a predetermined set of test conditions, such as a quality standard or set of heuristics); process-compliant strategies (where testers follow a set of processes defined by others, such as Agile testing); reactive strategies (where testers react to the actual system under test rather than trying to pre-plan the testing); and, other strategies in common use.  Rex will explain the pros and cons of each of these strategies, and factors that aid or impede success with them.  You’ll also learn how to blend test strategies to achieve optimal results, far better than any single strategy can deliver.