Blog : Updates

2023 Heads-up: The Inevitable Prices Change

2023 Heads-up: The Inevitable Prices Change

  • By BBST
  • February 15, 2023
  • Updates

[Update September 2023] Aligning the Foundations price with the other BBST® courses helped us maintain the quality of the education materials and offer fair compensation to our instructors. However, we need to increase further all course prices to cover the cost of continuous development. Starting September 26th, 2023 all courses and specializations prices will increase by 18%.

It’s been 8 years since the first people on our team started teaching, promoting, and eventually dedicating much of their resources to updating and developing the BBST® series. They were convinced (and managed to convince others like me) that BBST® can significantly improve the software testing practices of our industry.

During this period, we had some tough lessons to learn, among them being how much time and dedication such a highly valuable training program needs. Fortunately, your feedback kept coming with proof of their impact and inspiring ideas to improve. And so, the answer to the question ”is it worth it?” stayed a firm “yes”.

We started the year analyzing our resources, as most of our service providers increased their prices at the end of 2022 and all of Europe is getting ready for a recession. The conclusion is that we also need to adjust our prices to the current economic situation to continue developing the course series.

The prices change

If you are reading this blog post before March 15, 2023, you can notice that the Foundations course price is lower than the Bug Advocacy or Test Design one. We made an effort to provide it at a discount although the course is as valuable as the others, and although it takes as much time and resources to organize and keep up-to-date. The strategy behind this was to offer an extra incentive for those of you who find it hard to take that first step into the BBST® series.

In today’s economy, we can no longer maintain this discount.

Starting with March 15, 2023, the prices for the Foundations course and the specializations on our website will change as follows:

  • The BBST® Foundations course will have the same price as the other BBST® individual courses, 750 euros + VAT
  • The specializations prices will increase while remaining the best offer on our website:
    • a 2-course specialization will be 1275 euros + VAT
    • a 3-course specialization will be 1800 euros + VAT
    • and the complete 4-course specialization will be 2400 euros + VAT

If you are planning on completing a BBST® specialization or individual course, you still have time to register at the discounted price until March 15th, 10:55 am (GTM+2). Tell your community as well, and help us get to those who have the courses saved but need that extra incentive to register ;).

A new BBST® official partner: Oose

A new BBST® official partner: Oose

We are happy to announce our new partnership with Oose, a consulting, education, and training company based in Germany. For the past 20 years, they have been offering seminars and workshops, at their customers’ site and the oose.campus in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertelfor.

A few of their trainers approached us wanting to promote the BBST® courses among companies with german-speaking professionals. First, we invited them to take our courses, to ensure an in-depth understanding of the material and our educational method. Second, we talked about ways to make the courses more accessible to the companies they have been working with.

We came up with an interesting and hopefully very useful version for the first course in any of the BBST® specializations: BBST® Foundations.

The BBST® Foundations offered by Oose

It has been over a year of talking, planning, and working together. Now there is a hybrid version of the BBST® Foundations course designed for the german-speaking community.

The materials, method of teaching, grading, and the level of involvement from the instructors, have remained the same as in the courses offered by us. Oose brings two main differences to the course:

  • Language. The lectures will continue to be in English, but with German subtitles. The assignments will be in German. The instructors will be able to give feedback and interact with the participants in German.
  • Location. The course will be delivered online with on-site sessions in Hamburg.

The first course organized by Oose will start on the first of July. You can find more details on their site here.

We are very excited about this new partnership and hope that together we can bring the extraordinary skill-building teachings of BBST® to even more IT professionals all over the world.

BBST® Foundations 3.0 – Completely New Design With Content Revision

BBST® Foundations 3.0 – Completely New Design With Content Revision

We are proud to announce the first significant update on the BBST® Foundations 3.0 that we are planning to release this year: a completely new design with content revisions for all lectures and assignments. 

Back in 2014 we started our collaboration with Cem Kaner and Rebecca Fiedler, convinced that the BBST® series will change the practice of software testing. Our first goal was to make the courses more popular in Romania and Finland, then we committed to promoting them in Europe and now we are devoted to keeping the BBST® series as the go-to courses for advanced skills in software testing worldwide.

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Our first online workshop – Introduction to State Model Based Testing

Our first online workshop – Introduction to State Model Based Testing

Our instructor, Alex Rotaru, has previously organized the Introduction to State Model Based Testing (SMBT) workshop during Autumn Testing Camp and later talked about this concept during a seminar hosted by Cluj IT Cluster. The response and feedback he received after both events were very encouraging which is why we decided to make this workshop available on our platform for any software professional curious to deepen their knowledge on software testing and learn more about the process of test automation.

The concept of SMBT is introduced in both the BBST® Foundations and Test Design courses. Through this workshop, we want to go beyond theory and teach you how to apply it to different scenarios you can come across in your work as a software tester. Learn more about the important issues this workshop will help you solve.

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What to expect from Bug Advocacy: the hands on approach and revisions

What to expect from Bug Advocacy: the hands on approach and revisions

  • By Alexandra Casapu
  • September 15, 2016
  • Updates

If you have completed BBST Foundations, congratulations! You can now move on to a more hands-on part of the BBST series, starting with evaluating bug reports in the Bug Advocacy course module.

Compared to Foundations, this module is much more focused on practical exercises. You get to work on live bug reports of open-source applications. You can actually contribute to the documentation of these bugs.

The most appreciated feature of the course is the interactive grading session.  In contrast to Foundations, this session happens halfway through the course: you get feedback for an assignment, instead of the final exam. This way, your instructors will provide feedback that you can apply immediately on a subsequent assignment.

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First Foundations organized together with Altom

First Foundations organized together with Altom

  • By BBST
  • September 18, 2014
  • Updates

We are pleased to work with our colleagues at Altom to offer BBST Foundations in Software Testing from October 5 through November 2, 2014. This class will be on our new learning platform.

Canvas - BBST Foundations online learning platform

Participants will receive a copy of the BBST Foundations of Software Testing workbook.

If you’d like a seat in the upcoming class, visit the Foundations training webpage for additional details and registration. If you’d like to book training for a group from your company, contact us at info@bbst.info.

Canvas – A new online learning platform for BBST® Foundations

Canvas – A new online learning platform for BBST® Foundations

Starting with this next BBST® Foundations class, we will be using a new online learning platform – Canvas from Instructure.

Canvas is a new and modern platform, allowing both students and instructors to easily navigate through the course modules and intuitively use its online features.

Amongst our favorite features, besides the intuitive user interface and modern look, we would like to mention:

  • An excellent mobile application, allowing you to check your progress, read and contribute to discussions and read assignments and lectures straight from your mobile phone or your tablet (either from iOS or Android devices)Canvas App on iTunes
  • A calendar view with all the deadlines for each of the assignments in the class and your scheduled meetings with the instructors, all setup in your own time zone. The calendar feed allows you to easily add all these to your own personal calendar, so you have all the important dates saved on your computer or on your mobile phone.

Altom start a collaboration with Kaner, Fiedler & Associates, LLC

We are excited to start a collaboration with Kaner, Fiedler & Associates, LLC and to be offering a new generation of public BBST® courses.

We will try to gather here extra information useful for the courses, as well as impressions and tips from other people involved in the course, instructors and former students.

Together with the course and the BBST community, we would like this blog to help with building a platform for enabling learning in the testing area.
Testing is a complex activity, requiring a lot of knowledge and skills, when performed with passion and dedication. This is an idea we want to spread, and if you are inspired by it, we want to encourage you to further share it and build on it.

We also work with the idea that testing can be a valuable tool in software development projects. We enjoy learning experiences that we find useful in our work. This is what we would like to give further: an effective learning process, through which testing can be learned at a level which renders it very useful in the software development process.

 

Let’s make the most out of learning and testing!

Online pilot for BBST Domain Testing runs June 22 – July 19

Online pilot for BBST Domain Testing runs June 22 – July 19

The online pilot for BBST Domain Testing is scheduled for June 22 – July 19, 2014. Join Cem Kaner and Becky Fiedler for a first look at the newest online course. The pilot class is your  chance to influence course topics, shape activities, and give feedback on the final course. Read Chris Kenst’s report on his experience at the first pilot in January: http://www.testingcircus.com/bbst-domain-testing-experience-report/

Apply to participate here. [Registration is now closed]

If you are selected, you will need The Domain Testing Workbook (either print or electronic format available at contextdrivenpress.com or Amazon) to use in the class. We also will require a $50 non-refundable deposit to defray the costs of hosting the class.Any questions? Send them to info@bbst.info.

Domain Testing Pilot May 19-23 in Indianapolis

Domain Testing Pilot May 19-23 in Indianapolis

Are you ready to sharpen your domain testing skills? Join us in Indianapolis May 19-23 for the BBST Domain Testing class. We intend to show you that domain testing can do more than you might have thought!

The BBST pilot class is your chance to influence course topics, shape activities, and give feedback on the demonstration videos. Read Chris Kenst’s report on his experience at the first pilot in January – https://www.testingcircus.com/bbst-domain-testing-experience-report/ 

Applications are closed.

Plan to arrive in time for the welcome dinner on Sunday evening, May 18. Race fans may want to stay through the 25th to see the 98th running of the Indianapolis 500.

If you are selected, we will require a $100 non-refundable deposit to defray the costs of lunches and snacks.

Thanks to DeveloperTown for providing a meeting place for the class! We recommend the beautiful Sheraton Indianapolis Keystone Crossing for out-of-town participants. We’ve arranged a special BBST rate of $179/night.