Excellent testing is an open investigation by skilled technical people. Excellent test management requires you to center on the people who do testing—their skills, behavior, and relationship to the rest of the development process. This class will help you to be a better test manager.
Some approaches to testing require rigorous scripts and procedures to be established in advance of any test execution. Management then centers on the artifacts of testing instead of the activity. Rapid Software Testing rejects this approach, because it’s bad for business: outmoded, expensive, ineffective, and missing the point. You need to find problems before it’s too late.
Rapid Software Testing Managed (RSTM) will help you and your team to focus on business risk. Rapid Software Testing methodology is designed to adapt to your particular context. That requires managers who understand testing. This class teaches managers how to create a supportive environment and culture for better software testing.
RSTM is a two-day class when we deliver it onsite, in a classroom. For in-house classes, can also offer RSTM as a one-day follow-on to Rapid Software Testing Explored. We also teach RSTM online in a three or four-day format, consisting of four 90-minute webinars per day.
RSTM Goals
- The primary goal of this class is to help you, as a leader, deploy and sustain Rapid Software Testing methodology in your organization.
- A second goal of this course is to give you a better grounding in a humanist approach to technical management.
Who Should Take This Training
- Rapid Software Testing Managed is for you if you are responsible for managing testers or the testing process, either directly or indirectly.
- If you manage a test process directly, we will show you how to organize and justify it in a world where many people seem think that testing just slows down the project.
- If you are a development manager or product manager in a group with no test manager, we’ll help you to recognize important differences between managing programming work and managing testing work.
- If you are a leader in a development group that is working in or shifting to Agile, Scrum, or DevOps process models, we’ll show you how Rapid Software Testing methodology fits into those processes to help you test the right things, in the right way, at the right time.
- If you are responsible for managing an outsource or offshore testing group, we’ll help you to direct and steer the group and its managers to provide you with the information you need when you need it. We’ll also show you how to evaluate the quality of the testing work.
What Topics Are Covered
RSTM is taught Socratically, with exercises, discussions and illustrations of the RST methodology. Class discussions and debate address students’ questions and specific needs. We all learn from the unique perspective that each student brings to the class. We’ll cover:
- What is special about managing testing as an exploratory, skilled activity.
- Activity-based management and why it works better than artifact-based management.
- How automation can be used to assist the testing process.
- The “secret life” of testing and automation, and how they relate to estimation.
- How and why to explicitly associate test activity with product risks.
- Incremental test strategy and planning.
- How to think about the testing role and how it relates to the rest of the project.
- Advocating for testability, testing, and quality.
- Supervising and motivating people who test.
- Reporting project status to indicate progress and prompt the right questions
What Topics are Available
In addition to the central topics of RSTM, we also have a great deal of material on these topics, which may be covered on request:
- How to perform excellent testing in a regulated software development context.
- Using session-based testing metrics to cast light on how testers use time.
- Using reviewing escaped bugs to improve the testing process.
- Rapid Software Testing methodology review.
- Concise test documentation.
- Creating a professional testing craftsmanship culture.
- How to recruit better testers.
- How to think about “good enough” product quality.
Classroom or Online?
The classroomversion of RSTM takes place during standard workday hours over the course of two days (or one day, if done as a follow-up to Rapid Software Testing Explored). We can teach anywhere that has good wifi and a projector.
Rapid Software Testing Managed is now also available online:
- Live. The online class is always taught live, because the instructor to responds to student questions and challenges.
- Timing.The online class takes place over three days, typically via Zoom. We do three 90-minute webinars each day, with 30-minute breaks between them, covering 5.5 hours total time daily. These can be time shifted to better accommodate certain parts of the world. If necessary, the online class can be arranged over non-consecutive days.
- Recording. For public classes, we don’t allow recording. For a private class we allow recording for internal use only.
- Interactivity. Interaction is an important part of the class. So, in addition to allowing students to self-unmute to respond to the instructor, we also run a MatterMost chat server during the class. This facilitates conversation among students, as well as with the instructor (publicly or privately). It also helps us share documents, links, etc. We encourage students to activate their webcams, but that is not a requirement.
How RSTM Compares to Our Other Classes
- Rapid Software Testing Explored (RSTE) presents the methodology of Rapid Software Testing with brief practical exercises and Socratic discussion. Although management topics such as estimation or developer relations often come up, these are not given much class time. RSTE should be taken first to get the most out of RSTM.
- Rapid Software Testing Applied (RSTA) focuses less on the explaining and demonstrating the concepts and skills of RST, and more on experiencing the core elements of it. RSTA includes long exercises where you will test part of a real product, followed by debriefings. The class is taught in an online format (ten webinars over three days) or in a classroom 2-day or 3-day format. RSTA goes well with RSTM because it helps give a foundational understanding of the practical problems of actually doing testing.
- Rapid Software Testing Coached (RSTC) is a class for test leads, coaches, and managers who guide testing without necessarily doing it themselves. It focuses on how to build testing skills on the job, so it’s more focused on people issues rather than organizational issues. However, both RSTM and RSTC are about leadership.
What Students Should Bring
Bring a computer that connects to the Internet. You will be testing software.
Download a two-page PDF of the RST Managed course description