Want to learn more about RST? Start with About RST, where we provide material and links internal to this site. Then see the curated list below, consisting mostly of foundational articles about RST by James Bach and Michael Bolton. These articles provide an overview of the RST methodology, and can help you to prepare before attending an RST class. There is also a page of video highlights from the class.
You can find much more information about RST on the sites and blogs of James Bach (satisfice.com) and Michael Bolton (developsense.com).
Here’s a narrative roadmap of many elements of RST. At the top are the premises underlying software development and why we test; below is the “activity vortex”, with the tester and heuristic at the eye of the hurricane.
Over the years, we’ve seen the introduction of Structured Programming, Total Quality Management, Agile, Scrum, Devops—and after all this time, projects still stumble and products still drive us crazy. Why? Part of the reason is surely that many projects are … Learn more
This document lays out, in many dimensions, how RST methodology differs from and contradicts the type of testing advocated by the ISTQB, TMAP, and similar systems. In my opinion, which is informed by decades of watching the industry, working in … Learn more
In RST, we make a distinction between testing and checking. We distinguish between the two to keep humans at the centre of testing work. Tools can be enormously helpful to testers, but there’s more to testing than checking the build; … Learn more
In the beginning, there was testing. No one distinguished between exploratory and scripted testing. Jerry Weinberg’s 1961 chapter about testing in his book, Computer Programming Fundamentals, depicted testing as inherently exploratory and expressed caution about formalizing it. He wrote, “It is, of course, … Learn more
These are the appendices to the Rapid Software Testing Explored class. This is a downloadable pdf.
A statement of the premises on which Rapid Software Testing—our classes and our methodology—are based. These are the premises of the Rapid Software Testing methodology. Everything in the methodology derives in some way from this foundation. These premises derive from our experience, study, … Learn more