With credentials behind your name, you will:

Start 2010 with the fundamental skills to complete tasks efficiently and address challenges
Stand out from your peers with your professional certification
Add value to your career path and provide greater credibility to your team
Become an elite member of the 115,000 certified testers around the globe

I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye.

[James' Reply: Elite? Elite?! Hand me that pencil, I need to lose an eye, too.]

I agree with your comments about ISTQB. It provides a glossary of terms and not much else. As a Tester for 25 years at the bleeding edge, I have run more testing engagements than I care to remember. I have 3 experiences with ISTQB: 1. Real testers laugh at it. 2. Those testers who demonstrate their capability by refering to their ISTQB qualification as proof of anything and parrot the ISTQB homilies generally can not find their bum to wipe it. 3. It is a real pain when I go looking for my next challange to see roles where ISTQB foundation certificate is essential. Essential for what? One of your commentators, obviously an experienced tester said that he has certification as it will help him get a job. It puts food in the mouth of his kids. Well, I can tell you it has zero nutrional value.

I have been anti-certification since I started in technology — not just in my current QA days but also in my past days elsewhere in technology. For starters, they have always been maddeningly expensive. Even just the cost of taking the test themselves — never mind the cost of the prep classes (which are conveniently provided by the same people).

The necessity of the prep classes speaks to the nature of the certification. They are designed towards specific correct answers, rote memorization over innate capability — what education researchers call “near transfer”.

I took a Solaris sample certification test once. One question was “how do you determine the size of a file”. There was of course only one accepted answer, despite there being many different and valid ways to determine this in reality. I scoffed.

The problem is that now and again, particularly during the late 90s, employers demanded certifications before consideration. You’re required to have this and that certification, or never mind. I suppose the response argument would be “don’t work for that company”, and I’d tend to agree, but sometimes you need a job. As a result I’ve from time to time considered getting some sort of certification, despite the blatant theft of that industry, in order to add a little game-playing sparkle to the resume.

If we could convince the CTO/CIO/MIS/technology management of the world that certifications are meaningless and dependency on them is folly, I think that would be much more helpful than convincing technology staff of it.

[James' Reply: I bet most of these employers who "demand" a certification aren't really demanding it, but rather simply mentioning it. Of course, if you go through the HR group, they will hold to the rules because they don't know any better. You need to network and get through to the hiring managers, directly.]

Speaking of smoking, if I decide to burn my certification, you’ll be the first to know. The video will be on youTube.

[James' Reply: I will thank you for smoking your certification.]

As always, love your work.

Firstly, at a previous employer, we had a test manager declare a goal that he aimed to have all his test organization testing certified.
His test managers under him, weren’t so sure about this, myself included.
When asked by my manager (hesitantly) if I wanted the certification- I openly said “thanks but no thanks” and I explained that I’d been a tester a long time, and didn’t need to be ‘educated’ by people for 2 days, so that I could say I could test the way they think is best.
It is a con.
Its great for people who have failed at their chosen profession and want to be testers and want a quick way to add something “testerish” to their otherwise quality devoid resumes but little else.
As a tester, if you’re trying to find ways to cut stuff out of your resume, I think you’re in a good place and you don’t need such certification. If you need to pad your resume, then really you just need to work in the trenches, read, and work hard and learn. There is no magic bullet, and certification certainly isnt it.

For people who have already chosen testing as their profession- and take it seriously and think about what they do, why they do it, and how- ISTQB is a joke.

@Erik on Code Coverage.
At one place (which I cant name) circa 2003-5 we were encouraged to have high code coverage numbers.
I ended up hitting 95%.
Ill just say I proved a point.
It was very gameable.
I paired with my dev, cut out all debug code, all code that was not callable, removed all #ifdef’s and anything else that could possibly not be hit by the application being under test, then ran my automation against the instrumented binaries.
Just by doing those code removals pushed my code coverage from 67% to 95%.
In doing so, I single handedly drew into question the credibility of the process, and the product of that process- the numbers themselves.

What most people don’t understand about code coverage, is the difference between hitting blocks of code, and arcs of code.
Blocks as a code coverage metric is near worthless, unless you’re trying to hit code that is impossible to get to (see above refactor), or you’re flat out not even testing the functionality- more than likely it will get hit. The second it enters the block, its 100% covered.. useless…

Arcs on the other hand (eg. for,if,while,case:) add some value, as it least indicates that you’re trying different permutations.
Some value. Not an almighty measure of awesome, just shows you’re thorough, and can be a guide to cover holes in your testing that you missed- but the bigger problem of course is, if you were following TDD in the first place, there shouldn’t be any holes.
Seems a lot simpler to work smarter to begin with, than to work dumb then try and use code coverage to help you to fix it…

@Darren re:
>>Such poor advertising will surely lead to the downfall of the ISTQB.

You’d think that, but unfortunately, there are those of us that test software and inform customers- and allow them to make educated choices, and then there are those that use testing to blame others more effectively while seeking to avoid blame themselves. I’ve heard this kind referred to as “Teflon management” (nothing sticks). Fear, ISTQB sells well to the fearful, and will continue to for quite some time I can imagine. It seems like old school FUD with some curiously random spin.

You have come hard on people prophesing on “Methodology” and not “Skills”, but to my surprise, on the front page, top left panel “Navigation” on http://www.satisfice.com, the first listing is “Testing - Methodology” and then “Testing - Tools”. Why is “Testing-Skills” missing on the whole page itself?

[James' Reply: The short answer is because I don't know how to package testing skills on a website... But also, I'm not opposed to methodology in any way. I'm opposed to idolization of methods. I have ideas about what to do and how to do it, just like everyone else. AND I invite you to be skeptical about what I offer, and rethink things for yourself.

I appreciate your question, BTW.]

The most unfortunate thing is, in the name of Customer feedback, Value certification push is being forced into the services at various Big organizations who claim to be the Big testing power houses. This to the effect that none of the certifications are testing related but ….no ones knows the mapping.

Astonishing thing is this is linked to their performance appraisal and even if they are the best of the lot, if they have not completed this ir-relevant certifications, they will be moved to lower rating and thus salary grade. Mind you, after 2 consecutive downgrades, you will be shown the door. How stupid or how employee friendly?

[James' Reply: When doctors allow themselves to peddle fake remedies, unwitting people demand those, too. It's up to us to police ourselves, and refuse to lie, even when it's lucrative.]

In my experience, it’s the same kind of thinking that demands large volumes of metrics. It gives management a warm, fuzzy feeling that things are going well in spite of reality. This team, and others that I observed in my time there, had beautiful charts and graphs that made it look they were really doing great testing. We would run some final checks on their area that was officially 100% executed/100% passing and within minutes find show-stopping bugs. I’m wondering if other people have had the same observations.

This is just one more reason why I have come to distrust certifications. When I interview people now and they start to tell me about all their certifications I always tell them that I won’t hold that against them, and then immediately start to ask questions that assess their skill level. Fortunately, I get very few of those types of candidates.

For me, certifications are like putting a seat belt on a motorcycle. It gives you a false sense of security, but when crunch (or crash) time comes it really doesn’t do anything for you.

As I am working in a very big semiconductors company which values the help for the community, I am involved in volunteering in giving lessons in a social project which gives IT training for youngsters in order that they will be able to start their careers in the hi-tec industry (here in Israel).

Few of the guys which just finished the QA course and are looking for jobs asked us wether we could deliver them the ITCQB material so they could get “certify” and hopefully increase their ability to get a job.

I went back to them with the following offer - I am qouting the mail I sent to their program co ordinator:

Following our conversation, here is my suggestion for a lesson for the QA course graduates.

Goal of the lesson is to suggest ways to create a portfolio for a beginner in testing. I am confident that gaining such experience will be valuable by potential employers.

Lesson content:

Give an overview of different options, like open source and community testing, and how to use them in order to gain a skill in testing.
How to be able to explain and demonstrate your experience.

Such lesson is just a kick off and suggesting ideas. the hard work will start when the lesson ends. No pain no gain

End of mail.

I still hope that they will accept this offer. I know that its harder then to prepre to a multiple choice memorizing exam. But the bottom line is that here are alternatives.

[James' Reply: Wow, Issi, that sounds great.]

It gets me a foot in the door, nothing else. I still have to deliver. Me and my integrity sleep like a baby, thanks very much.

[James' Reply: It's not an ad hominem attack to point out the absurdity of the "edge is an edge" argument. It would be an ad hominem attack if I told you that you're wrong because you are a poopy head. That's not what I did. In fact, I would even say you're not wrong, you simply made a plain and straightforward statement that you although you AGREE with me on the substance of my arguments, you CHOOSE to PRETEND to others as if you value something that you have implicitly claimed not to value. That's called lying. You are telling us that you say things you don't believe in order to get ahead.

There's hope for you, though. You can still take the ISTQB banner off of your CV unless you believe it really makes you a better tester.]

On a more serious note, when I am running my own or other people’s training, the main thing I try to give students is a passion for testing, and an enthusiasm for learning. All good testers do this, Dot, Stuart, Paul G, Cem. Michael B, you, etc. The other thing is giving a context to what they are learning. Having trained testers who have floundered in their early careers without any knowledge, some sort of basic foundation knowledge is a useful starting point, but simplification of knowledge is a dangerous thing that an experienced trainer can point out, where someone less industry savvy may not.

[James' Reply: As I've said many times, I don't think the ISTQB provides a reasonable or useful foundation. I think the ISTQB view of testing is like creationist "science": lot's of mythology, uncritically mushed together.]

My favorite example is any foundation course that mentions coverage. Simplistic courses say go for 100% code coverage as a measure of great quality. I prefer not to mention coverage with novices, but when I do, I spend 5 minutes giving a history of coding practices, showing how simple 1960s Cobol like programs benefitted from code coverage, but the modern program of complex dataflows and objects with inherited properties may have 100% coverage ans still be unusable. The simplest example is the calculator tested with 100% statement and branch coverage that crashes when it tries to divide by zero.
Re standing up for professional temperance, late night after a day of a testing conference, zero temperance by most drinking testers, and some of them can barely even stand up either [grin]
I once trained a marketer in a certification (that included 3 hours of prac for every day of training). I explained that I wasn’t making him into a tester, but making him a more analytical thinker. He passed, and at least he sold the course more honestly after that…….

[James' Reply: I teach coverage but I mean a different thing by it, probably. I don't limit coverage to code. To cover is to examine with respect to a model of what can be examined.]

Yes. Maybe then skilled testers will get noticed. In many companies some skilled testers keep getting rejected in the HR round itself just because of such certifications or that they haven’t done any testing diploma from any known institute. Many a times even in job sites we can see such examples:
Urgently required ISTQB/Diploma holder in S/w testing for a reputed MNC.
We can only hope & try from our side to at least minimize such things to make this field a better work place.