ER: acting as a Rapid Software Testing Explored “peer advisor” (7-10 February 2022)

A relatively rare scheduling of the online version of the Rapid Software Testing Explored course for Australasian timezones presented me with an invitation from presenter Michael Bolton to act as a “peer advisor” for the course running from 7-10 February.

I had already participated in RST twice before, thanks to in-person classes with Michael in Canada back in 2007 and then again with James Bach in Melbourne in 2011, so the opportunity to experience the class online and in its most current form were both very appealing. I was quick to accept Michael’s offer to volunteer for the duration of the course.

While the peer advisor role is voluntary and came with no obligation to attend for any particular duration, I made room in my consulting schedule to attend every session over the four days (with the consistent afternoon scheduling making this a practical option for me). Each afternoon consisted of three 90-minute sessions with two 30-minute breaks, making a total of 18 hours of class time. The class retailed at AU$600 for paying participants so offers incredible value in its virtual format, in my opinion.

As a a peer advisor, I added commentary here and there during Michael’s sessions but contributed more during exercises in the breakout rooms, nudging the participants as required to help them. I was delighted to be joined by Paul Seaman and Aaron Hodder as peer advisors, both testers I have huge respect for and who have made significant contributions to the context-driven testing community. Eugenio Elizondo did a sterling job as PA, being quick to provide links to resources, etc. as well as keeping on top of the various administrivia required to run a smooth virtual class.

The class was attended by over twenty students from across Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia. Zoom was used for all of Michael’s main sessions with breakout rooms being used to split the participants into smaller groups for exercises (with the peer advisors roaming these rooms to assist as needed). Asynchronous collaboration was facilitated via a Mattermost instance (an open source Slack clone), which seemed to work well for posing questions to Michael, documenting references, general chat between participants, etc.

While no two runs of an RST class are the same, all the “classic” content was covered over the four days, including testing & checking, heuristics & oracles, the heuristic test strategy model & product coverage outlines, shallow & deep testing, session-based test management, and “manual” & “automated” testing. The intent is not to cover a slide deck but rather to follow the energy in the (virtual) room and tailor the content to maximize its value to the particular group of participants. This nature of the class meant that even during this third pass through it, I still found the content fresh, engaging and valuable – and it really felt like the other participants did too.

The various example applications used throughout the class are generally simple but reveal complexity (and I’d seen all of them before, I think). It was good to see how other participants dealt with the tasks around testing these applications and I enjoyed nudging them along in the breakouts to explore different ways of thinking about the problems at hand.

The experience of RST in an online format was of course quite different to an in-person class. I missed the more direct and instant feedback from the faces and body language of participants (not everyone decided to have their video turned on either) and I imagine this also makes this format challenging for the presenter. I wondered sometimes whether there was confusion or misunderstanding that lay hidden from obvious view, in a way that wouldn’t happen so readily if everyone was physically present in the same room. Michael’s incredibly rich, subtle and nuanced use of language is always a joy for me, but I again wondered if some of this richness and subtlety was lost especially for participants without English as their first language.

The four hefty afternoons of this RST class passed so quickly and I thoroughly enjoyed both the course itself as well as the experience of helping out in a small way as a peer advisor. It was fun to spend some social time with some of the group after the last session in a “virtual pub” where Michael could finally enjoy a hard-earned beer! The incredible pack of resources sent to all participants is also hugely valuable and condenses so much learned experience and practical knowledge into forms well suited to application in the day-to-day life of a tester.

Since I first participated in RST back in 2007, I’ve been a huge advocate for this course and experiencing the online version (and seeing the updates to its content over the last fifteen years) has only made my opinions even stronger about the value and need for this quality of testing education. In a world of such poor messaging and content around testing, RST is a shining light and a source of hope – take this class if you ever have the chance (check out upcoming RST courses)!

(I would like to publicly offer my thanks to Michael for giving me the opportunity to act as a peer advisor during this virtual RST class – as I hope I’ve communicated above, it was an absolute pleasure!)