What clients say about Rapid Software Testing
Many thanks to my clients who are willing to share their experiences.
For understandable reasons, some of them have asked that I use discretion in identifying them.
“Very happy to announce I’ve been honored to contribute a chapter to Taking Testing Seriously: The Rapid Software Testing Way by James Bach of Satisfice, Inc. and Michael Bolton of Developsense, co-creators of Rapid Software Testing (RST) .
Over the course of my career hiring and managing 1000s of testers around the world, RST has been the most valuable training as well as providing a useful language for speaking to management about testing and risk.
The chapter outlines a discussion where Michael and I explore my experiences running global teams, the role of testing in managing risk, and what I think it takes to make it as a test manager.
You can pre-order the book for the testers (or anyone) in your life on Amazon now – just in time for the holidays! Enjoy!
Taking Testing Seriously: The Rapid Software Testing Way
“Dive into the world of expert software testing with Taking Testing Seriously: The Rapid Software Testing Approach. This book arms software professionals with the knowledge required to master the Rapid Software Testing (RST) methodology. Written by two co-creators of the RST approach and supplemented by material from respected testers who offer valuable insights, it is an essential read for anyone seeking excellence in the craft of testing.”
Keith KLain
Director of Quality Engineering @ KPMG UK | Software Quality, Test Automation, Process Improvement
“It was another great week with Michael Bolton. Between the classes and this lovely event, it was an informative week with a lot of laughs. The Rapid Software Testing courses are a great way to explain and demonstrate the value of reasoned, intentional, and well thought out testing. I really appreciate every time I get the opportunity to spend time with Michael, either in the classroom or out.
I’d like to thank Resourcefully.io and Manuel Palanas for helping to organise and host everything. You are all amazing.“
Ryan BevenS
QA matchmaker and promoter of testing throughout NZ Aotearoa #peoplefirst
“Exciting week last week at Axxes IT Consultancy! 🚀 Our software testing consultants had the incredible opportunity to learn from the one and only Michael Bolton on Rapid Software Testing (RST). Not only did he deliver comprehensive training sessions, but he also graced our external events in Antwerp and Ghent with his presence, leading captivating sessions. 🎉 A week full of knowledge sharing and successful collaboration! “
2024 LinkedIn
Bart Van Raemdonck
League Coach QA at Axxes IT Consultancy | QA Engineer at DPG Media België | Speaker
“What a week! Back-to-back Rapid Software Testing workshops taught in-person by Michael Bolton, with appearance by James Bach on September 9th-13th 2023.
5 days crammed full of knowledge and goodies, techniques and tools, banter and brain teasers, and so so much coffee and soda to keep those brain cells running!
First 3 days was RST-Explored – https://lnkd.in/dpHQANBg – a great workshop teaching techniques, analysis, strategies for planning, reporting and communicating about testing, backed by impactful real-world testing exercises. But most importantly, the value of a critical mindset and the value of the information we provide as Testers. Greatly recommend! I was employing the PCO technique from Day 1 on return to the mothership and it’s already creating great results and discussions. Mwah!
Last 2 days was RSTF-Automation – https://lnkd.in/dPu8smhh – A workshop on automation strategies focused on the “Why” and “When” of automation. Again, backed by real-world API testing exercises and examples on how to avoid the traps of automation and how many examples there really are of automation being incapable of catching things any human easily could.
These courses are well thought out and wonderfully executed using the Socratic teaching method, which means you will be thinking and testing and discussing and most certainly NOT doing multiple choice quizzes.
I left with a ‘goodie bag’ of several hundred slides (which I’m still sorting through), a bunch of tools and a whole lot more confidence in my craft. Oh, and you get an autographed piece of paper too!
I highly recommend these workshops to anyone who is serious about their craft as Testers.
Rookies, veterans and managers alike.
Michael and James mean business when they capitalize the ‘T’ in Testers. And now I do too!“
Soren Aasbjerg Andersen
Senior Quality Engineer | Rapid Software Testing practitioner
“We were thrilled to host a renowned software testing specialist Michael Bolton, a testing guru, teacher, author, and consultant. During his visit, one and only Michael Bolton delivered a Rapid Software Testing class for Quality Tech Lab’s team.
In between, we managed to talk to the guru about the art of software testing, the rule of “Breaking Rules”, the world of doubts, and more.“
Quality Tech Lab
Yerevan, Armenia
“I learned that while testing is not about numbers of test cases or a reliance on a metric that has no value or can mislead decision making, it IS an activity to be performed. It IS experimentation and discovery and informing the decision makers of what was learned.
The course structure was flexible; it allowed the freedom to move in the direction of any question asked by a participant. The resources, websites and blogs made available provided a wealth of information from many test professionals. I would recommend this course to any test professional or manager interested in learning about testing activities.“
Read more on the Plato Tech blog
Plato
CANADA
“Adopting RST was the best move I made when establishing a testing practice at my organization just over two years ago. Recently my team needed to collaborate with a client’s test team (who employs factory-style testing). This was a great opportunity to discuss RST with them and establish a solid foothold on why it works for us — and why we’ll continue to use it on our upcoming product build with them. I’m positive they’ll see the value by the end of our endeavour together — and maybe they will take back some changes to consider in their own processes.
For anyone new to the RST space, the ability to speak succinctly and confidently about testing and RST is important. Along with reading and practice, attending the RST Coached and RST Managed courses was critical in my ability to do that with these clients.”
Ashley Palmer
Quality Manager, Modea
“The Rapid Software Testing course that I attended in June definitely surpassed my expectations. As an experienced tester I was becoming rather disillusioned of the so called ‘Tried and True’ methods of software testing and was really looking for something that resembled, well, reality. So now, instead of spending my time writing test cases, writing reports that no one reads and chasing down Product Specs and Feature Specs I test. What an amazing concept—have the tester do testing!
“It has freed up an enormous amount of time and, therefore, the testing is far more productive. Potential ‘show stoppers’ are being found earlier on in the test schedule and test coverage has also improved greatly. More time is spent on important matters and less time trying to hit a number target (i.e. 90% testing complete, 95% pass rate, etc.) The focus has returned to the task at hand (testing) and there is less focus on reporting (counting). That also allows for the tester to move into a more co-development role to assist with the implementation of new features and functionality. I’m happy, the Devs are happy, the customer is happy and the boss is happy—Thanks Michael!”
Blair Burke, B.Sc.
Software Tester, Print Audit, Inc.
“I attended the Rapid Software Testing course with Michael Bolton some time ago (July 2010), in Amsterdam, NL. And attending doesn’t mean ‘sit back, shut up and listen’. There are challenges, puzzles and a lot—a lot—of interaction. Those three days passed by in a second; not a single dull moment. But most importantly, to this date it has had a profound impact on how I relate and look at the art and craft of testing! Oh.. and the lifetime support is fantastic.”
Ray Oei
June, 2012
“Last week I took Rapid Software Testing from Michael Bolton. The three days of stuffing my brain in the beautiful downtown campus of the University of Toronto was loads of fun…If you don’t go to play each day, or you don’t think you can break the rules, or you simply want to become a better tester, give Rapid Software Testing< a try. I think you will find, as I did, that it is three days well spent!“
Michael Hunter (The Braidy Tester), Microsoft,
“This is your Brain on RST“
“The training was a great exposure to a lot of different concepts and methods of attacking problems, and the rapid testing strategy looks to be very useful. On Thursday a support issue came into the group that fell in one of my feature areas, so I replied. I did a little work before lunch, and while out at lunch I thought that this would be a time to try some of the rapid testing methods. Took about 10 minutes, noted steps and thoughts as I was going, and arrived at a cause and possible solution much quicker than I would have in the past“
A recent student
“Since Michael’s RST class our testers have been highly motivated and their testing skill has never been better. Our business owners and developers are incredibly happy with the ability of the testers to quickly generate a test strategy that explains clearly where the risks are and how they plan to mitigate those risks as they test. On top of that, our customers are getting predictable and high value product releases. I can’t remember the last time we had a fire drill related to obvious bugs in our code. In fact, our bug list coming back from the field has dwindled to next to nothing! I would highly recommend the RST class for any testing organization looking to up their testing game!”
Brian Kenny
“Recently I finished a three day training course on Rapid Software Testing with Michael Bolton in London UK. This course was very effective and had elements related to learning, questioning and thinking all along. It reinforced my belief that testing is not a ‘phase’ performed towards the end or a ‘100% automated suite’ as claimed by many Agile shops. Software testing is much more than that and it is extremely important for the successful delivery of any project… Overall this training and all the discussions we had during the course was an amazing experience. I would highly recommend this training to anyone interested in learning rapid software testing.”
Anand Ramdeo
LONDON, UK
“We are already starting to put into practice what you taught us—here is a mini case study. Four of the group sat down last Friday and tested another product. Dan (name changed for confidentiality –MB) guided and made suggestions. None of the 4 knew the product under test. The product test lead spent half the day being a live oracle. Results: Another 50 defects. Several were crashes (buffer overrun—thanks Perlclip!). Many UI and usability defects. By the afternoon the team was starting to find more specific defects in what the product should do, but wasn’t doing. However, by this time they were getting very baked. This sort of testing is really hard work! However, the product lead was amazed by what was found, and the defects found per hour invested was—once again—orders of magnitude more effective than the testing that was currently going on with the product. We are going to cycle this much more frequently, and the same four are going to dig deeper on the same product later this week as well.”
test manager
at a commercial utility software company, somewhere in Canada
“I thoroughly enjoyed your class on Rapid Software Testing. The more time I have to think about the class the more I find value in it. It has really changed my approach and ideologies around testing. The only thing left now is to get everyone in my office on the same page… Before I thought testing was just a stepping stone to move into development but now that I have more of an appreciation for testers, I think I’m going to stick with it and try to get others to realize how important testers are to software development.“
James Swanson
Minneapolis, MN
“You’ll be happy to know that my team has been actively meeting to implement changes for improvement, especially with the dashboard concept and that many of my folks are more engaged with their assignments because of their new outlook on the value they can add.“
Leslie Berth
MILWAUKEE, WI
“Michael is a born teacher. He is a very engaging and an effective speaker who knows his topic inside and out—a rare combination!“
QA Manager
Boulder, CO
“Michael is an exceptional teacher with extreme knowledge and commitment to this topic.“
Network Specialist
Toronto, ON
Personal Endorsements
‘I hired Michael in 2011 to train Rapid Software Testing to 50+ testers at Rabobank International. Michael did a great job and helped us change the mindset of many testers in our company. Ever since I have worked with Michael on a regular basis and I would endorse him to anybody. In 2012 he did a marvelous job providing master classes and train-the-trainer sessions in exploratory testing. Michael is sympathetic, fun, inspiring, enthusiastic, demanding, helpful and very knowledgable. He is the best questioner I have ever met. Always a great pleasure and honor to work with him.
Huib Schoots
Agile & Quality Coach @ Quality Accelerators & De Agile Testers
“Michael worked as part of our team in an engagement that allowed us to take advantage of his excellent testing abilities, as well as to benefit from his coaching and mentoring over an extended period. There is no question he took our testing skills – and also the capabilities of the overall software team – to the next level. I would definitely recommend Michael.“
Charlie Trainor
AVP, Product Platforms at Interac Corp.
“I’ve known Michael for over 10 years, from his days at Quarterdeck forward. I’ve designed courseware with him, written documents with him, designed tests, worked through management issues and technical issues, done difficult ethical analyses with him–I would trust Michael with my Social Security Number and my mother’s maiden name. And if I was too sick to meet a consulting or teaching obligation, I would feel confident that if Michael agreed to go in my place, he’d handle it so well that the client would be happy they hired me (and got him).”
Cem Kaner
AUTHOR OF TESTING
COMPUTER SOFTWARE AND LESSONS
LEARNED IN SOFTWARE TESTING
“I met Michael in person for the first time at the EuroStar conference 2007. Before that I have been in contact with him through continuously emails e.g. asking him for advice or guidance in tricky test situations. At EuroStar I asked him if it would be possible to have him perform the RST course for our test team at our site, UIQ Technology in Ronneby, Sweden. Michael was visiting us in April this year (2008) and his visit was definitely a success if you ask me and our test team. Michael is one of the best lecturers I ever met. He’s knowledgeable, funny, witty and very interesting. Whether you need a great test strategist, someone to teach you everything there is to know about the different sides about testing, a great test oracle or just a friend I will always recommend Michael. I also highly recommend Michael if your company is ready to take it to the next level and e.g. raise visibility of the required need for a balance between scripted tests and the exploratory testing approach.”