The Black-Box Software Testing Foundations course is one of the most eye-opening and in-depth online course on the fundamental concepts in software testing and its critical challenges. You will understand which is the scope of testing, test strategies, and software testing metrics so that you can bring the most value to your team!

Finishing the first course in the BBST® series is challenging but it will help you:

  • learn the fundamental concepts in black-box software testing
  • face the critical challenges of software testing and know how to cope with them
  • learn what a test strategy is and how to choose the right tests
  • apply multiple oracle heuristics to your own work in order to explain what you are doing and why
  • determine if a program has passed a test
  • evaluate your coverage of how thoroughly you’ve tested a program
  • know when to stop testing

Course Details:

 Fully Online

 3 weeks of classes

 1 week for exam

BBST® FOUNDATIONS REGISTRATION

*The final number of instructors might differ based on the number of students joining the class. We reserve the right to change, remove or add other instructors if the situation requires it. We guarantee that all modifications are made to ensure the highest quality possible.

Group Discount

Don’t miss out on our group discounts! Gather at least three participants and send us an email at contact@bbst.courses with the number of seats and classes that interest you. We’ll get back to you quickly with a custom quote for your group registration.

WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN

LEARN IN-DEPTH

BBST® Foundations offers the most eye-opening and in-depth foundations to testing. Presenting the fundamental concepts in software testing and its critical challenges.

IMPROVE IN YOUR WORK

We aim at giving you practical ideas you can apply, as well as raising your motivation to new heights. It’s a great opportunity to power up your testing passion!

STUDY AT A CONVENIENT TIME

Taking a course online allows you to participate without being out of the office for days at a time.

EXPERIENCE A CUSTOMIZED LEARNING PROCESS

You get tailored individual feedback from your instructors and you have the opportunity to interact directly with them to share your ideas and interests.

BE PART OF A COMMUNITY

You will get to test and work on different assignments with your student peers, as well as become part of the larger BBST® students group.

BBST® FOUNDATIONS COURSE DETAILS

Don’t let the name “Foundations” fool you. The course is not designed exclusively for the beginning tester. It provides deep insight into core concepts and common challenges in testing. Even if you are an experienced tester, you will discover there are valuable things to take away from this course. The course is called “Foundations” because it is a prerequisite for all later Black Box Software Testing courses. After you successfully complete this course, you are eligible to take other courses in the BBST® series: Bug Advocacy and Test Design.

The course includes video lectures, quizzes, homework of various kinds, and a final exam. All of the homework, and the exam, are reviewed by instructors, and individual or class-wide feedback is provided.

We have strict deadlines in the course to keep you on track and synchronized with your classmates so feedback from peers is available for everyone. Each week has two deadlines: Wednesday night at midnight and Saturday at midnight. Not in our time zone? That’s no problem at all. Your Canvas classroom calendar will convert the time zones for you.

This is your first course in the BBST® series, and perhaps your first online course. This leads us to mixed objectives. In essence, our goal is to prepare you for the later courses in the series. That includes both foundational content and skills for succeeding in courses of this type.

After this course, you should:

 Be familiar with basic terminology and how it will be used in the BBST® courses (Understand)

 Be aware of honest and rational controversy over definitions of common concepts and terms in the field (Understand)

 Understand there are legitimately different missions for a testing effort. Understand the argument that selection of mission depends on contextual factors. Able to evaluate relatively simple situations that exhibit strongly different contexts in terms of their implication for testing strategies (Understand, Simple evaluation)

 Understand the concept of oracles well enough to apply multiple oracle heuristics to your own work and explain what you are doing and why (Understand and apply)

 Understand that complete testing is impossible. Improve ability to estimate and explain the size of a testing problem (Understand, Rudimentary application)

 Familiarize yourself with the concept of measurement dysfunction (Understand)

 Improve your ability to adjust your focus from narrow technical problems (such as analysis of a single function or parameter) through broader, context-rich problems (Analyze)

 Improve online study skills, such as learning more from video lectures and associated readings (Apply)

 Improve online course participation skills, including online discussion and working together online in groups (Apply)

 Increase your comfort with formative assessment (assessment done to help students take their own inventory, think and learn rather than to pass or fail the students) (Apply)

There is no typical background that you need in order to benefit from the course. We have had both university students who were relatively unfamiliar with testing, and working professionals with several years of experience in testing.

Also, this course is not strictly targeted at testers. Managers and programmers who are interested in testing will find the course helpful by getting new insights into the testing process and skills that support it.

For a great learning experience, we encourage you to bring along your curiosity, be open to learning, and generous with sharing your thoughts and experiences.

As Cem Kaner defines it, interactive grading is “a technique that requires the student to participate in the grading of their work”. This provides an opportunity for the students to better demonstrate what they understood from the course material, and to get helpful feedback directly from the instructor on what to improve and how.

We think that interactive grading encapsulates the essence of formative assessment, by focusing on the learning experience of the student, not on the grade. Please read Cem Kaner’s post on interactive grading for more information.

For this course, you will use multiple resources to study:

 the video lectures and slides
 the required and recommended readings

The assignments are based on all these resources. This means that you will need to use them all in your learning in order to successfully accomplish the tasks for the course.

TESTIMONIALS

“I strongly recommend this course for both novice and senior testers and project managers. The course contains some of the best instructors I have ever had. Extremely knowledgeable, helpful and nice. The course material, assignments, and quizzes are great and make you reflect and analyze your answers.”
Lars-Gunnar Klason
“It takes a class like the BBST Foundations to get one to think about what it really means to be a tester, how one should position oneself on a project team in terms of the value he can add and what are some of the challenges a tester faces.”
Gabi Dobritescu
“Online course more social than any regular courses I’ve ever attended. Great content for both beginners and experienced testers. High recommendation!”
Anssi Lehtelä
“Thinking about problems on completely different level than any other certification I passed. Interesting topics presented in interesting way, led by testing professionals. I highly recommend this course not only to junior testers – anybody concerned with quality will benefit from this course.”
Tomas Straka
“BBST Foundations is the best software testing qualifications program I have ever attended. It confronts the tester or test organization stakeholders with the real challenges and dilemmas of the profession. It encourages critical thinking and learning, rather than relying on shallow best practices that provide no practical value.”
Patrick Naujoks
“This is a course that takes a lot of dedicated time and effort. Most articles and papers included for the students can be used to make good arguments when discussing testing in your every day life. It is a good start for testers who want to be professional testers.”.
Martin Jansson

BBST® FOUNDATIONS INSTRUCTORS

Cem Kaner
Cem KanerBBST® instructor and content owner
As a Professor of Software Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology, Cem Kaner’s research was focused on software engineering, primarily software testing, software metrics, and computer law & ethics.

His career is centered around a consistent theme: enhancing the satisfaction and safety of software customers, users, and developers.

Oana Casapu
Oana CasapuBBST® instructor
Oana Casapu has been working as a tester, test manager, and project manager on a variety of projects for over 18 years.
Her focus lately has been on contributing to the testing community. Together with her fellow testers, she organizes monthly meetups in Cluj-Napoca and facilitates events for the Tabara de Testare community.
Zoltán Molnár
Zoltán MolnárBBST® instructor
Zoltán Molnár has more than 17 years of testing experience in different roles, mostly in the telecommunications area.
He enjoys the intellectual richness behind context-driven testing and fully agrees with that testing is not merely a mechanical, technical work, but a complex, cognitive process that is fairly affected by social sciences.
Alexandra Casapu
Alexandra CasapuBBST® instructor
Alexandra Casapu specializes in exploratory testing using heuristics and testing techniques adapted to context. She enjoys coaching and mentoring other testers, shaping teams, and company-wide testing approaches, as well as doing hands-on testing.
She is currently Principal Quality Engineer at Native Instruments and co-founder of GISCollective.
In her free time, she enjoys programming, reading, and practicing critical thinking skills.
Dolores Pente
Dolores PenteBBST® instructor
Dolores Pente is a passionate software tester, with a focus on context-driven and exploratory testing. She graduated from Telecommunications Engineering in 2014 and since then she has developed a variety of skills taking on different roles and challenges in her projects, always finding a way to bring value and improve the software testing practice around her.

She is actively contributing to the testing community by holding test labs and workshops at different testing events. Since 2019, Dolly has been working alongside other instructors on updating the content and the design of the course series.

John McConda
John McCondaBBST® instructor
John McConda is a career tester, starting with his first internship in 2000 at JD Power in Los Angeles. He is currently the Quality Engineering Technology Leader at Moser Consulting. John began instructing for the BBST® courses in 2008 and loves teaching and mentoring in the Software Quality field. He also co-organized the Workshop on Regulated Testing in 2006 and still facilitates the workshop twice a year at STAR conferences.

Whenever he gets free time from his wife and five kids, John enjoys playing guitar, writing songs, and studying theology.

Ru Cindrea
Ru CindreaBBST® instructor
Ru Cindrea is a senior test consultant and managing partner at Altom. With over 20 years of experience, she believes all testing is exploratory and applies this mindset to complex testing challenges and when building test automation frameworks. Her focus has mostly been on testing mobile applications and embedded systems, as well as on automating game testing, where she is one of the main developers of the open-source AltUnity Tester tool. She has been a BBST® instructor for over 10 years and she has been working on developing the BBST materials and practical assignments that draw from her past project experiences.
Ray Oei
Ray OeiBBST® instructor
Ray Oei is currently CTO at Gamgee Netherlands BV. coaching, mentoring and managing all techies. He has been active in the IT field for over 33 years, of which several years as trainer and coach.

He is a founding member of DEWT (Dutch Exploratory Workshop on Testing) and has been a speaker at several test conferences. He is greatly interested in the human factor of testing as well as the challenges in investigating software in different contexts. He enjoys teaching and helping people learn more about the beauty of testing