The Tester's Headache: Tester Certification - my take...

Reading Simons Blog post The Tester's Headache: Tester Certification - my take... got me simmering again.

This something I have been bending my peers ears with and blogged in passing for over a year now.

For me the value in the foundation cert. Was two fold (btw I'm old school ISEB), it gave testers a commonon taxonomy and the course provided valuable networking.

Today too many of the candidates I interview simply see the certificateas a corgi gas fiiters badge. I have the cert. Therefore I'm a tester.

Worse still many candidates have self studied, and there the only aim is  to complete practice exam papers or question banks.

I was chilled to the core when speaking with Dave Evans from SQS as I thought the Agile Tester cert. I had heard about was a joke, or tester lore. It seems istqb are serious.

All that has happened is that the cert. Has been de valued, and so I don't make it a "must have" in the job spec anymore.

Has the calibre of applicant decreased? Nope, not one bit, it's just increased the volume.

I still have the blisters from the ISEB practitioner exam, but I can't think of anything I use from the sylabus now we are all out Agile.

Stuart