Page - 56 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

56 P.Gerrard 3.6 Structureof theFoundationScheme At the time of writing, only the Foundation Level scheme is defined, although the syllabus and course content are still work-in-progress. The high-level syllabus appearsover thepage. The teaching content comprises approximately 40 h of material; this would be supported by 40–80 h of assignments and offline discussion with peers and man- agers, readingandfurtherresearch.Muchof theearly training,on test fundamentals gives learners a set of questions to ask and discuss with peers, managers and stakeholders. Beyond that, theassignments tend tobeoneof the following: • Research, readingandstudyon testing-related issues • Topics such as test design have specific assignments, such as requirements to analyseandonlineapplications toexploreand test. • Modelling(focusingonrequirements, stories, software,usage, tests) • Practical test assignments (exploration, test designandbug-finding) The scale of teaching is such that our expectation is that most companieswould opt for a mix of classroom instructor-led, online instructor-led and purely online teaching. ALL training material will be presentable in all three formats. For the initial pilot classes, the ‘core’ modules would be presented in a classroom and feedback obtained. It is anticipated that the non-core modules would be usually accessedonline. Since a focus of the scheme is to help people to adapt to dynamic project environments, the thrust of the training is to help testers to think for themselves. A core componentof this is the systems, critical and testing thinkingmodules.Not every learner will be comfortable with all of this material, and systems thinking in particular focuses on broader problem-solving than just testing. But exposure to systems thinkingis still deemedtobeofpositivebenefit. Finally, there are some ‘people skills’ modules. These are intended to provide insights into the challengesofworking in teams, collaborationandbasiccommuni- cationskills.At theFoundationlevel thesearepurely introductoryandthe intention is to get learners to at least payattention to people issues. TheAdvancedschemeis likely togo intomuchmoredepthandoffer specific personal skillsmodules. Overall, the goal of the Foundation level is to bring new hires with little or no testing experience to a productive level. We have not used Bloom’s taxonomy to assign learning objectives, but the broad goal is for learners to achieve K4 level ‘Analysis’ capability in the analysis and criticism of requirements and the selectionof modelsandmodellingand testing of systemsbasedon requirementsor exploratorysurveys. Compare this with the ISTQB Foundation,where the learning objectivesaresplit K1:27%.K2:59%,K3:14%—afar lessambitiousgoal [8].