I think I get your point.

You mean we need to study software testing thoroughly to be a good tester. Like go through as many software testing books as one can find. Read blogs, attend seminars, and above all, apply those things to our real testing.

We don’t need anyone to get ourselves ‘labelled’ as a ‘certified tester’.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[James' Reply: You don't need that label, unless you want a better chance of getting a fake testing job from someone who's a fake test manager.]

Also, if you could give one single suggestion or advice from your experience – something that you think would help greatly to be successful as a tester – to someone like me who has just entered this field – what would that be ?

[James' Reply: Read Introduction to General Systems Thinking, by Weinberg. Then read everything else by Weinberg.]

I am an EnC Engineer and working as a tester for past one and a half years. I got the tester job because of lack of experience in Computer Science. I did very well in manual testing till the job involved just running the application and finding bugs.

But what after that? How do I progress from here?

Whichever field we take, it has some formal training and certification. Our law, medical and engineering degrees are nothing but certifications.

[James' Reply: They are not necessarily good certifications, either. Anyway, I have had no significant formal schooling since the age of 16. Even before that I was fighting it. I think I didn't actually learn anything in a classroom environment since the age of 14.

You don't need formal schooling to be a great tester. But you do need a lot of learning and study.]

Do we have anything in the field of software testing which can give confidence to our employer about our testing ability – any qualification or industry standard ?

[James' Reply: We don't have much, but who cares? Employers need to be able to tell if a tester is qualified. They can do that without certifications. I've hired many testers. I don't believe I ever hired a tester with a certification.]

I am not saying that ISTQB or any other organization is doing a very good job by offering these certifications. Its just that there is some void in our field which they appear to fill.

[James' Reply: There may be a void. But they don't fill it. Or else, you could say, they fill it with lies.]

I hope you understand my point. Do you know any alternative to these certifications that we can go for at present to be called as “professional testers”?

[James' Reply: The obvious alternative is to study your craft, create a portfolio, create a reputation, and impress people by demonstrating what you can do.]

And if you had to design a certification or a course for testing, what would it like be ?

[James' Reply: I have designed classes. I teach my Rapid Testing class. See also the BBST class, offered through the Association for Software Testing]

Moreover, this has been the reason I have not attempted ever to give a ‘skill-enhancing’ online ISTQB examination to get ‘ISTQB certified”. I guess I have right understanding and have likeminded colleagues here.

I think you are right about ISTQB. A few months back when went for an interview, that Consultant insisted on taking ISTQB cetification. Also, he emphasized that if I come to him in 2 weeks with ISTQB certification he’ll make sure that I get a job in that company.
Strange but after all this non sense he told me that I’ll have to pay him 5000 Rs so that he’ll send my resume across all the companies in his (s0 called) database. I thought he’ll stop here but no the night mare was not over….. he continued saying that after I get job I’ll have to pay him 1 month’s salary as well.
When I told him that to get a job in an organzation my skills & my knowledge are important than these certifcations. On this he said that if thats the case no will hire you.
Thankfully I didn’t paid heed to any of his rubbish & today Im working for of the best companies in India.

[James' Reply: Good job, Roshni.]

Side A: It is true that certification is still gaining ground quickly… In a recent Israeli conference I attended it was announced that the army decided to have all it’s software testers ISTQB certified (I don’t know if it really happened).

Side B: This week I received a LinkedIn alert about a forum activity. One of the posts was titled “What really makes a real real software tester? How software tester becomes professional?” (sic)
Being LinkedIn what it is, I was expecting a storm of acronyms and certification names to follow the question — but was surprised: The first two answers were certification related, and the next 20 answers bashed certifications as harmful, useless or at least not that important.
One anecdote on LinkedIn doesn’t testify for the whole testing world, of course. But it is nice to see people reacting.

Certifications are very easy to sell to perplex managers. I guess it will take individual testers to change the market and make the managers see the truth.

James, the list of self-certified testers include only publishing testers: they blog, teach and are ‘celebrities’. My belief is that non-publishing testers can self-certify too, I’m sure (or, I hope) you’ve met testers like this, and it is a point worth to be made.

[James' Reply: First of all, anyone can publish. You can blog or Tweet instantly.

My brother got his first job as a tester by doing testing exercises with me and talking about them with the people he interviewed for.]

[James' Reply: We investigated open certification and discovered that it can't meet our standards. That's the difference between my community and some of the others. It's more important for us to do quality work than it is to "get something done" even if it's crap.

There is already another kind of certification available to anyone who wants to work for it: personal reputation. Pradeep is in the process of earning that. So are many folks in my world. Jeff Fry, Ben Simo, Michael Bolton, Mike Kelly... They are known and respected.]

I am aware that if the open community will start to hit the ITCB in his pockets by offering a free alternative, thing could get even more ugly , but meanwhile in this war, you allready lost Europe, and other GEO’s like Israel and east europe seems to go it that direction too ahve Cem and the other speakers of the certification-free world got cold feets?

[James' Reply: I don't see it as "we lost." If the whole world decided that pi equals 3, then things would break down and eventually the whole world would wake up. I think I'm speaking about reason and reality. Eventually, a critical mass of people will wake up and call bullshit. When that happens the certificationists will try to shift the story (you're already seeing it) by creating new "levels" of certificates. They will claim that the higher levels are the real certification, and they will try to fool the world into giving them more money.

Fundamentally, just as the medical world had to drive out charlatans to make significant progress, we will also have to drive them out of our craft. But I don't want to see that done with regulation. Rather, I'd rather see it done with ridicule.]

The real proof is your work, so in the work of selling myself as a consultant, it’s far more important for me to have references from previous work. I have been project manager, but I do not have a PMP certification, for instance. My previous work sells my project manager abilities.

I have certifications on two levels of ISTQB and do not regret taking them. The most important part of the certification, though, was the courses. The course leaders’ experience (and communicate that experience) and ability to inspire the participants is far more important than the end certification, in my opinion, so I suggest to others in our company that are interested in learning about testing to take a course run by people I know have something valuable to teach you about testing and not just a certification. A certification exam is a good way to verify that you have learned something during the course, though.

Also, foundation-courses can give someone new to testing a good basis to build on for their new position as a full-time tester.

In our company’s group for test managers, we encourage everyone to think for themselves what needs to be done in a test management scenario. There is no single syllabus, book, article, seminar and so on that can teach you a template for running tests. All projects are different.

James Bach will never be able to teach anyone everything about testing. Neither can a course that leads to ISTQB certification. But it’s a good start, and both courses and certification syllabi can help you structure your thinking on the subject.

[James' Reply: I don't think it's a good start. I think it has set you back. Among my colleagues and the people who resonate with my work, your casual acceptance of the ISTQB is a strong indicator of having a shallow and confused notion of testing.

To me, getting ISTQB certified is *exactly* like buying a university degree online. For any of you who have been forced to get certified in order to get work in this field, I sympathize, but at LEAST don't take your "certificate" SERIOUSLY!]

In the words of Chef Ramsay, it's all bollocks.]

[James' Reply: They don't take five minutes to cover well, they would take months, because they are embedded in a much deeper ontology and skillset of testing.]

I would be a lot more likely to take the test, for fun, if I would not be counted among the “100,000 testers can’t be wrong” rhetoric.

[James' Reply: Every one of the 100,000 testers who were bamboozled or coerced into taking the test is wrong. And every one who took it thinking it means something important about testing skill is wrong. It's a measure, if anything, of just how weak and/or simple-minded those practitioners are.

With every tester who joins the program without first critically analyzing it (and many testers seem not to have the professional commitment or ability to do that analysis) the program becomes that much more of a farce. Hey, they have Lois Koslowski, a woman with absolutely no credibility in the field, selling certification. She smiles as she brags about how ISTQB is so dominating that they don't need to make a cogent case for certification any more. She must have placed her ethics in a blind trust when she took that job.]

I mean, what if they /were/ wrong? How many of them are in the position of your initial commenter, and honestly wish they could un-do their taking of the test? One thing I would be interested in the ISTQB offering would be a “please stop listing me in your millions of hamburgers served” button, where you fill in your name/email and your number is removed from the database.

[James' Reply: Don't touch them. Their taint will leave a glowing mark of sepsis on you.]

However…..

Companies want skilled personnel and are willing to pay extra for it. Any wrong in that? I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. If it pays out for them, it just fine by me! They get worth there well spent money. Just like they should. Hoever, the current level of certification isn’t optimal yet. At the moment the only thing companies are paying for is a piece of paper that “someone ones had the knowledge to pass the exam”. Does this prove his/her excellent testing skills and knowing how to practice it? Well, in my opinion, the line on the resume saying you passed an exam doesn’t prove that at all. I’ve seen too many tester wasting the customers money, still saying they are “certified testers”. Lets review their work according to a standard (and that could just as easily be the ISTQB standard). Do they still pass the exam? Is there work still worth certifying? Yes? Well, then, and only then is it worth certifying. Certifying the tester… certifying the product… well, what the heck, maybe even give out guarantees.

Then, how should a company recognise a good tester? The experience on your resume should prove that! The satisfied customers should prove that. For now, ask them!

[James' Reply: I'm promoting a far deeper idea of testing skill than you seem to be talking about. The first thing I have to do if I work with an ISTQB tester is get them to forget all the nonsense they had to memorize in order to pass the stupid test.

So you might wonder, if it isn't testing, why do people think that it IS testing? It's because A) while testers are pursuing those silly ideas, they end up accidentally or incidentally learning and thinking in ways that are useful for testing, although not very efficiently, and B) managers accept the waste and shallowness of ISTQB (Factory School) testing as normal, and C) some testers are secretly pursuing the kinds of testing I promote, without publicizing it to their management.]

Today’s world of Software Testing has become more and more crowded. I though may not need a Certificate but wanted to go through for something other than ISTQB (not close to IEEE). May I ask you to suggest, which Center of Excellence to approach for a Test Manager’s certification.

I have asked you only because I have been advised by you earlier and got doubts clarified.

Thanks and regards,
Srinath M K

[James' Reply: You should self-certify, as Pradeep has done. Meanwhile, Pradeep is running a program at Edista that looks interesting.]

I just don’t think people learn anything from these tests. I don’t really understand why they even still exist. Someone could argue that management thinks they have meaning, but I am management and I don’t think they have any meaning.