This post does not include everything involved in the ISTQB syllabus, nor everything that is included to pass the certification exam. I wanted to share my thought and notes I collected during my exam study, which might be helpful for someone.
When I started my new job there was a waiting time before my work projects were going to start. The company has training courses in ISTQB. So I spend about a month studying their material and material I found online, more about that later.
Why even bother with a certification?
During my software tester education that was a question that kept coming up in my class and discussed both between us and senior testers who did our lectures.
The answers were as one could expect, divided. Most answered that it is not that important, and it is better to focus on becoming skilled in the business in other ways, like real work experience.
Others thought the ISTQB certificate would be worth its time and cost. It is the most well-known one within the industry and shows one’s knowledge.
My personal opinion leans closer to the first opinion, the reason is that I don´t think a specific certificate actually shows one’s knowledge or how good one is at their job. There are many senior, highly skilled testers who have not passed the exam but still ace their work. Some (like myself) have a difficult time with timed test sessions, not that one can´t handle pressure but just isn´t comfortable with the situation and it might affect the result.
But with that said I also see how a certificate can be valuable, both that one learns a lot during the study, and you get something real that shows your knowledge to some degree.
As a developer I am used to being able to show more specific things about my work and progress, developers have code, maybe different code challenges, code language course certificates, etc.
Testers? Not so much. This has really been bothering me since I started the path in testing, how can I as a newly graduated tester show that I have knowledge, and experience, enough to do a great job. Here I think certificates are one answer that can help establish within the industry.
That was the reason why I started to study for WAS (Web Accessibility Specialist) certification earlier. I won´t go into that topic here but posts on that topic can be found in my other posts. Back to ISTQB.
Certification Exam Specifics
- The certification can be done on-site or online.
I did this online thru ASTQB and can only speak about my own experience, not any of the other ones. It was done with a program that was downloaded to my computer. Opened in a secure browser, which means that it locks the rest of your computer so you can´t access anything else(not even the bookmark bar, watch, etc), only use the main screen. The UI itself was easy to use and all communication was done in a chat window before the exam started.
- There are 40 different questions, the same structure as the mock exams that can be found on ISTQB/ASTQB´s website.
- The time limit is 60 minutes or 75 if you do it in another langue than your native one. I would say that it is enough time to both go thru all questions and have time to go back and inspect them again. Of course, this is very individual but I took it slow and really paid attention to all questions/answers. Went back and read thru all of them again, spent extra time on those I wasn´t sure about, and still had about 20 minutes left when I sent it in.
- One thing worth mentioning, I had a network failure right before I was done, this didn´t erase anything. A notification came up to inform me that a failure was detected and if it couldn´t reconnect within 3 minutes I should restart the software. All answers/information would be saved. Now my network went back up within a minute so nothing more happened. Just wanted to mention it since it is one more thing to not worry about.
The result
- Directly after you click done you get the result, the percentage and if you passed or failed. The relief when I got that I passed with 80%! Yay! After that, it is just to click done and the browser closed automatically and your computer is back to normal.
- It takes about 24 hours before you can access the result details and get your official certificate. For ASTQB it can be found on the same site as you log in to register for the exam, there you can also select to get an email when it is available (instead of logging in to double check every ten minutes).
- The certificate is electronic and can be downloaded, linked to your LinkedIn, and more.
Preparation
There are already so many websites that have great information, strategies, etc about this so I won´t repeat what can be found there too much. I will try to list my opinions, and experience on how to get thru all of that syllabus and actually remember something.
First thing, do not stress about it. Yes, the syllabus is major. Yes, you do need to learn the details, not just the main topics or glossary. Yes, all of it won´t make sense or even reflect the reality of how many do their work.
The syllabus is classified into levels:-
- K1: remember
- K2: understand
- K3: apply
For me, it helped to remember those levels and use them after each chapter.
I divided my time into sub-chapters, like chapter 1.1, chapter 1.2, chapter 1.3, and so on. After each one, I did some practice and questionaries. Since I did this with access to my company´s training course I had different material available where small questionaries were included. Might be a good idea to sign up for a training course or check online for questionaries.
A caution note here:
I found several mock tests, apps, and material that were promoted as ISTQB preparation material BUT were not correct, many had irrelevant material included, and some used glossary that is not connected to ISTQB specifics. So make sure you use a material that is correct. It is easier to learn new than to unlearn something.
After each section, I made sure that I had an understanding of the chapter I just read. How I could connect that understanding to applying it to a work task.
There are 6 different chapters:
- Chapter 1: 175 minutes Fundamentals of Testing
- Chapter 2: 100 minutes Testing Throughout the Software Development Lifecycle
- Chapter 3: 135 minutes Static Testing
- Chapter 4: 330 minutes Test Techniques
- Chapter 5: 225 minutes Test Management
- Chapter 6: 40 minutes Tool Support for Testing
The time included above is what the syllabus mentions as required for accredited training courses. Wouldn´t really spend any energy on that, focus on your own feeling of how much time you need.
All chapters are important to learn, not that you can skip any and think it would be ok. For the certification exam, it is all about the details and you would miss those by skipping over the material.
If you have an education in software testing you will already have knowledge of many things, the lectures have the same topics and fundamentals. Probably the same if you are a senior tester, but I could also see that even if someone knows how to apply techniques, levels, reviews, and tasks for different roles it is ISTQB´s view and wording that is relevant here. Make sure to read thru the syllabus and learn their glossary and fundamentals.
Mock tests
I would recommend reading thru all of the syllabi and doing some small chapter-specific questionaries before you start with mock tests. Why? To avoid learning the answers only based on the questions, to gain a deeper understanding.
There are different mock/practice tests on different ISTQB-related sites, for example, the ones at ISTQB and ASTQB are different. Make sure to do them all!
Not only will this give you more knowledge it will also make you understand their way to write and think about the exam questions.
This part annoyed me, I just can´t see the point in overcomplicated trick questions/wording. Yes, of course, it shows that one has understood but really, to fail only because you didn´t select the answer that they see as the MOST relevant one in that specific wording. Because that is one thing to pay attention to, the smallest detail in wording.
My advice is first to read the question and make sure you really understand what´s written, and the purpose of the question.
Then read all answers before selecting one. It can be just one word, one statement that makes the difference between correct/incorrect.
My structure while doing the mock tests was two different ways:
For the first 2 tests I did I did like this:
- Read the question
- Find the main topic
- Search the syllabus for the topic
- Read the topic
- Look at the answer selection
- Match syllabus/answer
I had the tests in PDF format and opened them in the Edge browser. Used the highlighter to highlight my answer. Added text where I felt I needed to come back to learn more, small notes from the syllabus.
Went thru all 40 questions that way.
Then compare answers with the correct answers document. Mark right and wrong answers. Calculate your result.
Then afterward I went thru and read my notes and put some extra time into the ones that were incorrect. Everything to make sure I had an understanding of the topic.
The second way was to time the test session and go thru it as one usually does. Read /answer all questions before marking and go thru my answers the same way as above.
Last but not least thing I can think of to mention is to draw/write out the numbers for those questions that might need it. Like if the question asks for equivalence partitions, tables, or other types of coverage. It will make it easier to visualize and see the connection to the text in the syllabus.
That´s all. Ok, this text became longer than I intended but hope it can help in some way.
Feel free to contact me thru comments or the contact form if you have any questions, I will try to help if I can. And just to clarify, I will not give any details about the exam questions or anything that is not already published on the official ISTQB sites.
Good luck with your exam preparations!