Page - 50 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

50 P.Gerrard There are some minor schemeswhich operate, but ISTQB has becomethe de facto standard in the industry. But therearewell-knownproblemswithcurrentcertification: • Ifyoulookat thecertificationschemesyllabuses (FoundationandAdvancesTest Analyst, for example), the table of contents comprises mostly what we have called logistics. The certification schemes teach many of the things we say we donotcareabout. • Theschemesmostlyofferonewayof implementingtesting––theyaresomewhat aligned with various standards. Incident Management, Reviews, Test Planning, Management and Control are all prescriptive and largely based on the Waterfall approach. • Muchof thesyllabusandcoursecontent is about rememberingdefinitions. • Thesyllabuses infer testdesigntechniquesareprocedures,where thetesternever models, or makes choices. The tester and exam-takerare spoon fed the answers rather than being encouraged to think for themselves. There is no modelling content. • Thesyllabusesdon’t teach thinkingskills.Theword thinkingappearsonce in the 142pagesofFoundationandAdvancedTest Analyst syllabuses. • Exams, being multiple choice format, focus on remembering the syllabus content, rather than the competenceof the tester. Certification does not improve your ability to be independent thinkers, modelers or (pro-)active project participants; the exams do not assess your abilityasa tester. This is a bigproblem. 3 TheTesterSkillsProgram After that lengthy justification for a new approach to thinking and inevitably skills acquisition, this chapter focuses on the strategy for the development of a Tester SkillsProgram(TSP). Work started on the TSP in late 2018 in line with a provisional plan agreed with it@cork Skillnet. But as time passed it became obvious that the initial goal of creating a 3-day beginner class would not satisfy the requirements of the Program Members. The challenges faced and the range of topics required to fulfil the needs of a professional tester were much more ambitious than could be delivered in just 3 days. With hindsight, this was obvious, but we tried to align with the plan as agreed. Thecurrent strategyemergedover the earlymonths.