I started studying for the ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualification Board) CTFL immediately after the last certification test and finally sat (and passed) the exam on 9-July 2021. It’s been a long love-hate relationship with studying for this exam and I’m glad to have it behind me. The main driver behind sitting for and obtaining this was for professional advancement. I work for a great company here in Maui with a good mission and the Executive Director took a chance on hiring me (or so it felt). I wanted to be able to prove to myself (and others) that I knew what I was doing – enter certification.
Resources used include two different Udemy courses (at different times, of course), the ISTQB CTFL syllabus, and a book, Foundations of Software Testing by Dorothy Graham, Erik Van Veenendaal, Isabel Evans, and Rex Black. I downloaded and printed the book from a wonderful GitHub user how had the book saved in PDF format. The first Udemy course I bought was complete shit. It was literally total hot garbage. I did maybe half before putting it down. During the same time, I also read the CTFL syllabus. Then a long break occurred in part because of the shit Udemy course and intense boredom with the material since I do Software Testing for work Monday-Friday… reading about the extra theory and practices just wasn’t interesting to me. I skimmed through the syllabus again and I felt confident and ready to test so I looked into taking the exam and… oh no… this exam wasn’t offered through Pearson VUE, the company I’d known for the past few exams. Enter another long break. When I came back again, I decided to refresh with the Udemy course even though I wasn’t a fan… only to find out the course had been removed from Udemy. I guess enough people had complained. I contacted support and received a refund. With the refund, I picked up another/new course. This course was much better. I listened/watched the course through once on 2x speed and felt confident and ready to test again… but I still didn’t know how to schedule, so I had another month/two break. That brings us to July. I’ve been thinking about another training track I wanted to follow but didn’t want to leave this unfinished since, professionally, this proof-of-knowledge aligned well with what I was actively working and I wanted to finish out. So, I buckled down and figured out scheduling for the exam.
ISTQB is an internationally recognized certification organization comprised of national boards. In the US, we have ASTQB (American Software Testing Qualification Board) that handles all US based testing, complete with a curated ‘US List of Certified Testers’ that certification holders can opt-in to. ASTQB testing is handled by ATSQA (Association for Testing & Software Quality Assurance) which in-turn passes testing over to a scheduling website, Webassessor. Webassessor is, I’m guessing owned(?) by an organization called KRYTERION. Can you tell it’s a little confusing? From the Kryterion link testers download a testing program, Sentinel, and are required to enroll in biometrics which was just a web-cam picture.
I scheduled in the evening of Wednesday, 7-Jul and took the exam early afternoon on 9-Jul. Luckly for me it all worked out and I’m on to the next train of focus!
My profile: https://atsqa.org/certified-testers/profile/344e65d606574d1bb363ebf192f6b5e7