BBST® - Black Box Software Testing Course Altom, in collaboration with Kaner, Fiedler & Associates is offering a new generation of public BBST® courses. Throughout the course series, which uses the most up-to-date course materials created by Cem Kaner, we strive to offer an experience that facilitates enhanced learning by providing continuous individual feedback, as well as interactive grading.

2. BBST® __ ­­
­­­Black Box ­Software Testing
Altom, in collaboration with Kaner, Fiedler & Associates is offering a new
generation of public BBST®
courses. Throughout the course series, which uses
the most up-to-date course materials created by Cem Kaner, we strive to offer an
experience that facilitates enhanced learning by providing continuous individual
feedback, as well as interactive grading.
The courses are delivered online, using the popular learning platform Canvas,
and are thus accessible to a wide range of people, regardless of their location and
timezone.
The courses include 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 classwide feedback is provided.
Each course is carefully designed to build up skills which will be used in subsequent
courses, so each one is a prerequisite for the next. This way we aim at providing
the most effective learning experience for our students and helping them practice
their skills so that they are ready to apply them when faced with challenges in their
testing work.
Successful graduation of a course is rewarded with a completion certificate.

4. 1. BBST®
Foundations
The first course in the series is BBST®
Foundations, which is organized around four
critical challenges in software testing:
• What is the mission of a testing effort and how does the project strategy help
achieve that mission?
• How can a tester determine whether or not the program has passed a test?
• What are the key challenges in developing and using software metrics?
• How can testers measure the amount of testing that has been done and
estimate the amount of testing that remains and how can we decide when to
stop testing?
 26 Feb – 25 Mar 2017
 14 May – 10 June 2017
 20 Aug – 16 Sept 2017
 12 Nov – 9 Dec 2017
Schedule
Don’t let the “Foundations” in the course title 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 experienced testers will discover many
valuable things to take away from this course.

6. 2. BBST®
Bug Advocacy
BBST®
Bug Advocacy helps testers develop skills in effective bug reporting. Some
of these skills are primarily technical, such as troubleshooting failures and isolating
failure-producing configurations.
Many bugs are left unfixed because they were not presented persuasively. The
course applies lessons from sales, psychology and law to help you understand how
to:
Schedule
 09 Apr – 6 May 2017
 13 Aug – 9 Sept 2017
• present your reports more credibly and more persuasively
• assess the quality of troubleshooting and communication of reports written
by staff or colleagues.
This hands-on course involves participants in real-life interactions with an open-
source software project so they can experience a realistic work environment. Then,
in the privacy and safety of the course learning environment, they will give and
receive constructive feedback on their contributions to the open-source project.

8. 3. BBST®
Test Design
The third course in the series is BBST®
Test Design. After having been supplied an
overview of seventy-five test techniques, the students will do a deeper analysis of
six of them:
Schedule
 1 Oct – 28 Oct 2017
• risk-based testing
• scenario testing
• spec-based testing
• function testing and testing tours
• domain testing
• combinatorial testing
All these lay a solid foundation for context-appropriate design of your tests.

9. Benefits of taking the BBST®
Courses
The courses are held online, so flexibility is one big advantage.
In these courses, the instructors provide a substantial amount of individual
feedback for the students, in addition to the classwide feedback and
interactive grading sessions. All these facilitate a personalized learning
experience.
The courses are delivered by dedicated instructors with a strong testing
background. All our instructors teach the course along with Cem Kaner and
receive feedback from him on their contribution, helping to improve their
skills and the value of the feedback students get.
We use up-to-date course materials, created and developed by Cem Kaner.
Students also receive a workbook authored by Cem Kaner and Rebecca
Fiedler.
Students will get to test and work on different assignments with other
student peers, as well as become part of the larger BBST®
students group.
We aim at giving students practical ideas they can apply, as well as raising
their motivation to new heights. It’s a great opportunity to power up their
testing passion!
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10. Testimonials
 This is a must-do course for personal development, focusing on black box testing
and not only.  — Andrei Pirvulescu, QTeam Software Solutions
 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 everyday life. It is a good start for testers who want to be
professional testers.  — Martin Jansson, Qualityminds
 Brilliant context-driven testing foundation course, in-depth material to challenge
you and help you learn.  — Doug Buck, Games Workshop Ltd
 Mind-opening experience, providing a great foundation for future development
in the field of software testing.  —Pavel Zechmeister, Summit Media

11. Content Owners
Cem Kaner is a Professor of Software Engineering at
Florida Institute of Technology. He teaches and does
research in software engineering, primarily software
testing, software metrics and computer law and
ethics.
His career is centered around a consistent theme:
enhancing the satisfaction and safety of software
customers, users and developers.
Rebecca Fiedler is an educator and a lifelong learner.
She has spent decades teaching students of all ages
- from kindergarten to university.
In the testing community, she works with Cem Kaner
on the BBST®
online professional development
courses. She is a regular attendee and presenter at
the Workshop on Teaching Software Testing and
has had numerous presentations at national and
international conferences in education and education
technology.

12. Instructors
Alexandra Casapu does software testing at Altom.
The environment she works in has facilitated her
learning on the importance of context in testing, the
exploratory approach, and caring a great deal about
improving her testing skills.
In 2014 she became an instructor for the commercial
version of the BBST®
courses, enjoying the great
experience of going in depth with valuable learning
material and having more interactions with fellow
testers.
Ru Cindrea is a senior test consultant and managing
partner at Altom, focusing on test management
and mobile software testing. With over 10 years of
experience, she believes all testing is exploratory
and she is currently working with the Finnish testing
community on building a strong group of testing
professionals.

13. Instructors
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 bring more value through their work.
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.
For the past 7 years, Alexandru Rotaru has been
working with Altom. Being a small company, his role
and tasks vary a lot. He works as a test engineer /
test lead at customer’s site on fixed length projects,
he does administrative tasks, interviews and
training sessions. He interacts a lot with current and
potential clients to try to understand their needs
and problems. This makes for a great learning
experience!

14. Instructors
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.
Oana Casapu has been working as a tester, test
manager and project manager on a variety of projects
for over 10 years.
Her focus lately has been on contributing to the
testing community. Together with her fellow testers,
she organizes the monthly meetups in Cluj-Napoca
and facilitates the events for the Tabara de Testare
community.

15. Instructors
Ray Oei is currently team leader QA at Innovation
Labs by AVG and has been active in the IT field for
over 25 years, of which several years as trainer and
coach.
He is a founding member of DEWT 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.
Lalit Bhamare is a passionate context-driven tester.
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 connect with the testing
community and passion for continuous development
of the software testing field help him contribute best
in organisations he works for.

16. Altom BBST®
Classes in 2017
Foundations 26 Feb – 25 Mar 2017
Bug Advocacy 09 Apr – 6 May 2017
Foundations 14 May – 10 June 2017
Bug Advocacy 13 Aug – 9 Sept 2017
Foundations 20 Aug – 16 Sept 2017
Test Design 1 Oct – 28 Oct 2017
Foundations 12 Nov – 9 Dec 2017

17. About Altom
Altom is a Romanian software testing company specialized in testing services,
testing consultancy and testing training.
We are a team of skilful and enthusiastic testers keen on exploring applications in
all their visible and hidden corners to provide relevant information to the client.
We consult clients on how to approach difficult testing problems and help them
provide a structure to their testing activities.
We promote context-driven testing, exploratory testing, innovative testing
techniques and development of advanced software testing skills through our online
courses BBST®, on-site trainings and other software testing workshops, events and
collaborations.
As part of our training program, we have organized multiple on-site trainings
in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Helsinki with groundbreaking software testing
consultants: James Bach, Michael Bolton and Maaret Pyhäjärvi. We also offer
courses developed internally: Examine your testing skills, Automation in Testing
using Selenium and Hands-on BDD.
Get in touch with us at training@altom.ro