What I've been up to lately
Things have been busy in the last month or so and I felt like sharing what I’ve been up to lately. Most of it revolves around software testing:
April saw the start of Dan Ariely’s A Beginners Guide to Irrational Behavior class on Coursera. I knew I had the BBST course coming up so I didn’t commit much time to the class other than watching the video lectures and doing the video quizzes. There are many aspects of irrational behavior that affect what we do in software development and testing – I’d like to write a more in-depth article about that in the future.
On the 14th of April I started the BBST Test Design course and completed it on May 8th. For those who have never taken a BBST class before they are incredibly intense month long courses. The course breaks a single calendar week into 2 class weeks – one week with 4 days, and a shorter week with 3 days and each week requires about 10-15 hours of work in order to do the readings, labs and work on the exam. The class is done but I still don’t know if I’ve passed; regardless I learned a lot.
On April 19th I joined the NRG Global Online test competition. My last post was a reflection on how well I thought I did and despite my low perception, my team ended up winning part of the competition!
I went to STPcon 2013 at the end of April in San Diego where I met up with a few Miagi-Do’ers, met some other testers I’d heard from in the twitter-verse or blog-o-sphere and learned a few things. I’m planning to write an experience report and post it either here or on the newly formed Miagi-Do blog. I think it might apply a little more here but I don’t know how it will turn out because I haven’t written it.
During the Test Design course I picked up on Test Design being the last of the 3 BBST courses and there being 3 more courses – Domain testing, spec-based testing and scenario-based testing listed in Cem Kaner’s diagram. I asked Cem about the domain testing course over twitter and he kindly sent me an email with a draft domain testing workbook which I plan to review – right after I email him back and telling him when.
May 8th through 10th I participated in the Rapid Testing Intensive Online #2 as a peer reviewer. It was fun to sit on the other side and provide some feedback to the students on their work although I would have been more effective if I was able to do the assignment as the students were – I just couldn’t take the time off work. Nevertheless I found participating as a peer reviewer to have its own unique challenges as I interacted with other testers and tried to answer their questions. In the RTIO there’s a ton of material and references coming at the students so it helps to interact and help others.
May 16th I signed up for the BBST Bug Advocacy class that takes place in June. One of my year end goals is to complete all 3 BBST courses and then pursue BBST Instructor so I can help others. In fact as I was writing this I signed up for the BBST Instructors course in October!
Lastly I’m looking for a cheap / free place to host a public Rapid Software Testing course with Paul Holland in the Los Angeles area. Anyone know of a place that can fit 20 people comfortably?
Wow I’ve got a lot to do…