AST's membership consists of scholars, students and practitioners who are interested in the advancement of the field of software testing.
AST has multiple objectives, including: The AST's first conference, named "CAST" for the Conference of the Association for Software Testing, was held in Indianapolis, Indiana in 2006 and had the theme "Influencing the Practice".
The AST offers a series of online training courses in black box software testing (BBST), based on videos from Florida Institute of Technology's Center for Software Testing Education & Research (CSTER) with additional study aids and support from live instructors.
The initial set of courses enhances materials developed under a series of grants from the National Science Foundation.
The AST courses run 4 weeks each and focus on a single topic or test technique.