Deep insight into core concepts

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

Foundations classes

 Nov 05 – Dec 02, 2023

English

Online

Instructors*:

ZOLTÁN MOLNÁR

RAY OEI

Promotional price: 885 750 Register

 Nov 10 – Dec 08, 2023

English & German

Hybrid

Organized by:

Oose

Go to oose.de

Jan 21 – Feb 17, 2024

English

Online

Instructors*:

to be announced

Promotional price: 885 750 Register

Mar 17 – Apr 13, 2024

English

Online

Instructors*:

to be announced

Promotional price: 885 750 Register

Jun 09 – Jul 06, 2024

English

Online

Instructors*:

to be announced

Promotional price: 885 750 Register

Nov 03 – Nov 30, 2024

English

Online

Instructors*:

to be announced

Promotional price: 885 750 Register

NOTES:

  • 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.
  • The price will go up on September 26, 2023. Register now and save €135!

Team Discount

Register together with your fellow testers and save up to 10% OFF

For groups of 3 to 4, we offer a 5% discount. For groups of 5 and more, we offer a 10% discount. Just add the selected courses to your cart and the discount will be added automatically.

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.


A course for beginners and experienced software testers

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. For more info on interactive grading, please read Cem Kaner’s post here.

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

BBST Foundations Instructors

Cem Kaner

Cem Kaner

BBST 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.

ZOLTÁN MOLNÁR

BBST Foundations Instructor
Zoltán Molnár has more than 20 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.

Ru Cindrea

BBST Foundations 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.
OANA CASAPU

OANA CASAPU

BBST Foundations 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.

John McConda

John McConda

BBST Foundations 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.

Alexandra Casapu

BBST Foundations 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.

RAY OEI

RAY OEI

BBST Foundations 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

Dolores Pente

Dolores Pente

BBST Foundations 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.

LALIT BHAMARE

BBST Foundations instructor
Lalit is a passionate context-driven tester from India, currently working in Germany. He is chief editor and co-founder of popular testing magazine “Tea-time with Testers”. Lalit’s specialties are his test management and coaching skills. He has taught over 20 full-day RST classes at Barclays and regularly assists James Bach in his RSTA online class.

Lalit feels that his connection with the testing community and his passion for continuous development of the software testing field help him contribute best in organisations he works for. Lalit is a conference speaker and has conducted public workshops on exploratory testing.

Gabriel Dobritescu

Gabriel Dobritescu

BBST Foundations instructor
Gabriel Dobritescu has been a software tester for over 10 years working in a variety of testing roles across a number of different industries. He believes that testers should be professional learners, relentless in their quest to improve their testing skills and in their effort to add more value to the company they work for and to the customers they serve.

Lately he has been focusing on better understanding how people learn, how the brain works and how we can become better at teaching testing to other people