A Testing Course with a Difference – “BBST Foundations”

I am blogging after some time gap. One of the things that I did during this break was to do BBST Foundation course. Here I would like to share my experience of this 1 month long course and why I think it would be useful for Indian Software Testing community.

BBST foundation course is a basic introduction to ‘Black Box’ Testing. You can read the details about this course here. This course includes video lectures, quizzes, homework of various kinds, and a final exam. The course is provided Free of Cost for the AST members. So this is a course which is non-commercial in nature and is dedicated for the betterment of the Testing community.

Ideally one should have some Industry experience for taking up this course although it is not mandated. But I would say, for reaping better benefits from the course a Software Tester should have atleast 2-3 years of experience in IT industry.

There were 11 participants in my batch mostly from US, although there were participants from other countries as well. Apart from me, there was one more Indian (Rajkumar Pandian from Chennai) in my batch. The batch began with ‘Meet and Greet’ session where all the Testers had to introduce oneself to the batch. It was really cool and gave all Testers a platform to share their interests and make friends with like-minded testers and other testers in the group. There were Testers with wide range of experience, right from beginner (1 tester) to Testers with 5-7 years experience and also people who have chosen Testing after having experience in different fields. So this a playground where Testers can put forward their point of view, debate, learn from other Testers, learn how Testers work in different geographies, how the challenges differ and their experiences. This is place where your work would be challenged and put under scrutiny by Testers with different set of ideas and expectations, and you will have to defend your work. Your work would also be evaluated by some of the Experts in the Software Testing field who have got decades of experience.

It is really great Fun!! and lots of learning too. I am not sure whether Testers who had appeared for CSTE or ISTQB or other similar exams would have experienced anything close to this. This course had got many ingredients where a Tester’s skills are really put to test and clearing this exam would build a lot of “Credibility” for the Tester within the Testing community.

Having gone through the grind and fun for 1 month of BBST course, I believe this course deserves more recognition from the Indian IT Industry. This course would give the IT industry a better insight about their Testers ability and skills than any CSTE or ISTQB exam can actually give. But for this to happen, I believe more Testers from India will have to take-up this course and share their experience with the Testing community.