Self-Education for Testers: Tutorial with James Bach 25th March

Update: This is what James has to say about his class

I am a self-educating tester. For the ambitious thinker, self-education is a way of life. For the ambitious tester in particular, it is indispensible. If you think about it, testing itself is a learning process (and also a process of unlearning what is not so). In this tutorial, I will tell you how I do it. My self-education system has been, for me, a substitute for institutional education and a competitive advantage. Although I left school at an early age, if you already have a higher education, so much the better! You get the best of both worlds.

I will explain and demonstrate the methods that I use develop ideas for my articles, books, and classes, so that you can use them draw out and codify lessons from your own experience.

I will discuss:

- The fundamentals of adult self-education
- Entry points for testing education
- A personal syllabus of software testing
- How to identify, articulate, and test your own heuristics
- How to assess your own progress

Tobbes Comments

James Bach is the person that has taught me the most useful stuff about software testing.  The first time I met James in person was at the Rapid Software Testing Class in Sweden about six years ago. I had earlier read articles and talked to colleagus about issues that sparked my interest. For three days he questioned many of our beliefs about testing in specific and reasoning in general. I started to think about why I had the knowledge I had and if there was any good reason for having it. I had a lot of problems applying a lot of common testing methodology but still tried since so many authorities stated that "this was the way to do it". I suddenly realised that not all testing experts had the same thoghts about what effective and effecient testing was.

A very important part of the class was James methods for learning. Experiental training inspired by Jerry Weinberg made the experience fun and easy to remember. He also talked very much about how we know what we know - also known as epistemology . He talked of areas I had never heard of before like Abductive Inference and told us to actively search for knowledge. James told us about his way of learning and I thought, Wow - it sounds like a treat!

From that day I started to buy lots of books and my self-studies increased in intensity. Together with that I started reading blogs and joined the context-driven testers discussion group. For me, reading interesting things is an enjoyable experience. Learning new things in the areas of Logic, Lateral thinking, Philosophy, Psychology and many more areas has benifited greatly to what I know today and I strongly believe that the success of any tester, or any other career for that matter, lays for the greater part in the hand of the person itself.

And now he has finally written a book about his self-study method.  ”Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar”  has references to the Buccaneers that pirated the South Americas in the 1600s and he compares their way of organising with his own search for information. He also has a dedicated website on the subject.

For the first time ever in Sweden he gives a Tutorial on Self-Education for testers. Anyone interested in educating themselves and thus becoming a more valuable resource should seriously consider this opportunity. If you have already taken the RST class and want to have som more inspiration - this is your chance to continue!

The tutorial takes plave 25th of march 2010 at SAS Radisson in Gothenburg. Take me to more practical information and registration details.