I have to admit that I’m certified. The initial reason was to express to the world that I believe in Software Testing as a profession were you need skills. And the certificate was a sign that I know/knew the terms.

Over the years the meaning of having the certificate changed. It changed from a sign of my self to be proud of into a tool for account managers as customers are asking for testers with certification without guarantee of the level of skills.

I think in your presentation (and off course J. Bach) you express very well that we shouldn’t rely much on the note having a certificate.

Only it helped me also personally. As said initially, showing that I take my profession seriously by showing that I take courses to increase my knowledge. As starting tester it is hard to attend seminars as speaker to show you have something to say or write articles. So organizations are calling to hire you.

It also helped to give me some borders of software testing and make me think beyond those borders. It also helped me identifying other information which might be useful in our occupation.

Is certification useful? Depends on for whom. It might be useful for:
- Sales to obtain assignments.
- Organizations to make the initial selection, only they have to admit the risk that there are also very good testers without certification.
- Testers to learn the basic of testing and identify borders

And it will be more useful for those who start the certification program to read your presentation and this blog to learn that having a certificate doesn’t turn you into the wizard of test.

I don’t remember having created study guides or tests–except in the sense that I wrote a goodly number of technotes at Quarterdeck. These were written mostly to help provide quick answers to our customers, but I was very conscious of the fact that they served to improve my own understanding of the products, and that they were valued internally. I also was a relentless participant in the internal support bulletin boards. Those discussions and the richness of the learning available are missed by everyone who was involved with them, at least in my circles.

I don’t think I ever took any of Quarterdeck’s internal certifications, but I got a fair amount of recognition for technotes and internal and external support. These were things that the bosses saw every day, so in my case, certification was continuous. I agree with Will, though, in that, all other things being equal, internal certifications stand a somewhat better chance of being relevant to some constituency and context. On the other hand, my recollection was there wasn’t a one-to-one correspondence between expert techs and certified techs, Will’s certification and his expertise notwithstanding.

My recollection is that the diversity of skills, interests, and backgrounds was the principal asset of the technical support department, certainly when I arrived. Another thing that helped was the diversity and complexity of the problems that we had to solve. Yet another was a culture that valued all that stuff. I’d be prepared to argue that we had better techs before the certification movement. That’s a matter of history; I’m not arguing that the certifications did much harm and they may have helped some people to some degree.

In my opinion, it is far more valuable at the organizational level to value internally developed certifications. Preferably multiple types based on various disciplines in place at your company. For example, at the early start of my career at a company called Quartedeck (where my career in SQA began) we had internally developed “certifications” for the technical support of our products. Each product had one or more study guides and tests, created by the more experienced techs (Michael?). These “certifications” were specifically designed to prove your subject matter knowledge of our applications. They were often difficult yet not impossible and truly provided a vehicle for knowledge growth (both personally and departmentally). Other benefits were feeling a firm sense of accomplishment gaining some respect amongst your peers and managers for the effort. All in all it made for a damn fine tech support team, fully capable of dealing with supporting our software over the phone. And, since the more “talented” techs tended to eventually move to QA or Development, made for better testers and developers. Which should be the primary goal of any certification program, homegrown or otherwise.

So, consider creating your own certifications for your team or organization. You’ll be happy you did.

I’d guess so. By the way, folks: Sajjadul is someone whose work and whose writing suggest to me that he has the mind of a skilled tester. He articulates his process, his observations, and his thinking very well. That’s not a certification–I haven’t watched him testing–but I would be very surprised if he weren’t a good tester.

Carlos: I think that the ISEB/ISTQB certifications will not make you a good tester, but I also believe that is good that some enterprises require it to hire people because in some countries of the world, testing is seen as a worthless activity into the development process and the certification is a good beginning for the derstanding of what testing is for the applicants that look for certain testing job position.

Hi, Carlos…

I’d contend that it depends on what kind of certification you’re talking about. If you’re referring to the Foundation level certification, I disagree. It’s a toy test (40 multiple choice questions) of trivial nomenclature (not of knowledge), and it uses the approach of one and only one right answer. Skilled testing doesn’t brook that kind of thinking, to me. If you’re talking about a Cisco-style certification, then I might be inclined to agree with you.

(In the Cisco program, you’re given the task of fixing a broken router. If your process is reasonable, and if you can articulate it, then you pass the test, maybe even if you don’t fix the router. This emphasizes that even a skilled network engineer and appropriate heuristics can be fallible; you might not have fixed the thing because you were unlucky. On the other hand, if your process is not reasonable or you can’t articulate it, then you’ll fail the test, even if you fix the router. The issue is that even an incompetent engineer and an unreasonable process can be lucky, but we’d just as soon not depend on that.)

There’s no need for organizations to scare incompetent or unqualified applicants. When testing is seen as a worthless activity, it’s largely because worthless work is being done by worthless testers. A worthless exam is hardly a way to break this cycle.

A company that insists on an ISEB/ISTQB certification as a requirement for employment attracts my attention, too–just not the kind of attention that I infer they’d like to attract.

What do you think?? By the way I am not certified and I not planning to do so.

I think, on this point, your actions speak far more clearly and accurately than your words do.

I think that the ISEB/ISTQB certifications will not make you a good tester, but I also believe that is good that some enterprises
require it to hire people because in some countries of the world, testing is seen as a worthless activity into the development process and the certification is a good beginning for the derstanding of what testing is for the applicants that look for certain testing job position. I hope that those enterprises use this requirement just to scare some applicants that believe that doing
testing is a simple job and they are going to be hired without a problem, and to attract the attention of those who are really interested and have experience in testing eventhough not having any
certification. What do you think??

By the way I am not certified and I not planning to do so.

The software development industry in Bangladesh is fairly competitive and making good progress. Although it is miniscule compared to India.

There are no tester certification boards and so no one can take the tests. So although many employers are hiring testers, there are never any prerequisites for certification.

Also there are no testing training institutes and so at least there is no bad training. Finally, there are literally no books on testing, when you can find abundance of books on programming and software design. So testers have no choice but to collaborate on the internet and with other testers and gather as much relevant information as they can regarding testing.

I am curious of where it goes from here.

There was an attempt by a local company to initiate ISTQB certification, but they are so slow and inexperienced in testing that I doubt they will make much progress. Lucky us! Well, it has been about two years and still they are at square one, i.e. starting to register a company

A blessing in disguise?

As always you have amazing presentations full of great Ideas, and I think this one represent the real problems in the certification projects. I haven’t think about the Cisco ones, and yeah, if they do it, why we doesn’t think on it…

Thanks a lot.

Literally, overwhelming.

Not only can I not imagine ever working for an organization that required certification, I can’t imagine such an organization valuing my actual skills highly enough to pay reasonable wages.

I’ll stick with the (uncertified) crazy dreamers, for now at least. They’re more fun and they pay better.