What software testing training should I do? It’s a question I’ve been asked many times. My answer? It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. What your goals are. This wasn’t always my answer. My answer used to be a list of highly recommended (by me), challenging, practical, hands-on training courses designed to take you to the next level. But not anymore.

So why’d I change my answer? Well, for a few reasons. For one, not everybody gets super charged up hearing that type of thing, it can be intimidating. Some may immediately believe that they don’t have that type of time or energy on top of work, life, family, and other commitments to take on training courses of this nature. Others may be pressured to obtain a particular type of certification. So I went back and thought about it and revised my answer.

So what’s my answer? It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes companies, management, influential stakeholders in the company start rewarding or preferring certain types of software trainings like certifications. Somebody in this situation may need to take a training to keep their job, or to continue evolving in the company because those with influence are looking for a certain paper that says a person is qualified to do a job (even though they may not be). For this person, there’s a certain goal attached to the type of software training they are looking at completing.

However, if you’re looking for a software training course to make you a better software tester and to build up your skills, I recommend highly participatory, practical training courses that require you to work on solving problems and doing actual work related to the training, over those coures built on theory alone. This is how people learn, by applying what they’re learning to different contexts, including their own. I’ve seen way too many software testers who’ve taken theory based courses, have passed multiple choice exams, and who have certifications, not being able to apply what they’ve learned to real world software situations. The theory based courses have taught them one way, and one way only of how a concept applies – a best case, perfect scenario. Real world situations are far from perfect and differ in so many different ways. So even having one or two variables changed in the real world situation will stump these testers. They’ll try to apply something that turns out to irrelevant because they haven’t really learned how to use the concept.

If you’re looking at software testing training courses to make you a better tester, to evolve your skills, and take you to the next level, look for practical courses that teach you and require you to do the work and use the concepts, strategies, and techniques as part of the course. There are a few I can recommend that I won’t list here, but you can contact me and I’d be glad to refer them to you.

Remember, the more skills you have, the further you’ll be able to go, and the more valuable you’ll be.