ISTQB - What and Why

What is ISTQB? ISTQB- International Software Testing Qualification Board Offically founded as a Non-profit Organisation in the year 2002 Currently there are 18 national boards approved Internationally recogononised certification program. If you’re a professional tester, test manager, quality assurance staff member, or programmer responsible for testing your own code, you have already discovered that, far from being trivial and straightforward, testing is hard. There’s a lot to know. In a nutshell, any tester certification program worth your consideration should confirm, through objective, carefully designed examinations, your professional capabilities. Not only does the ISTQB program do so, it is also practical and real-world focused. We address only concepts that you can apply to your work. We support your career path by providing levels of certification that correspond to your experience and roles. Further, we promote and advance software testing as a profession, not merely an ancillary role on a software development team. So far, the ISTQB program might sound like other tester certification programs you’ve heard of. Here are a couple unique characteristics. First, the ISTQB syllabi are developed by working groups composed of worldwide experts in the field of software testing, including prac- IISTTQB Cerrttiiffiicattiion:: Whyy You Need IItt and How tto Gett IItt If you’re a professional tester, test manager, quality assurance staff member, or programmer responsible for testing your own code, you have already discovered that, far from being trivial and straightforward, testing is hard. There’s a lot to know. Unfortunately, most practitioners tend to carry out testing as if it were 1976, not 2006. Common practices lag best practices by around 30 years. ISTQB certification is about raising common practices to the level of best practices. Suppose you are a tester on a project to develop a new system at your company. Somebody e-mails you some screen prototypes with notes that describe the input and output ranges for each field, the actions taken based on particular inputs, and the possible states associated with key objects managed by the system. Would you know how to start designing tests for such a system? ISTQB certified testers do. Suppose you are a programmer on the same project. You are using a newly purchased tool to help generate and execute unit tests on your code. It reports the statement, branch, condition, and multicondition decision coverage achieved by the tests, and flags constructs that were not tested. Would you know how to create additional tests for the uncovered constructs? ISTQB certified testers do. Suppose you are a test manager on this project. After four weeks of testing, the project manager asks you, ―Based on testing so far, what are the remaining risks to the quality of the system?‖ Would you know how to do risk-based test status reporting? ISTQB certified testers do. ISTQB certified testers know how to do these things and more because they have mastered the topics laid out in one or more of the ISTQB syllabi. They feel confident that they have mastered these topics, and can prove to others hat they have, because they have passed one or more of the ISTQB recognized examinations, rigorously developed to check each examinee’s abilities to recall, understand, and apply key testing concepts. In this article, I will explain how the ISTQB certification program works. You’ll become familiar with the Foundation and Advanced syllabi, and you’ll know where to find online copies of each so you can learn more. I’ll tell you how you can prepare for the exam, laying out options from self-guided self-study to attending courses. I’ll discuss the exams and what to expect when taking them. www.istqb.org