This five-day course leads to the ISTQB Advanced Test Analyst Certification. It is dedicated to test analyst issues such as producing test documentation in relation to domain testing; choosing and applying appropriate specification, defect and experienced-based test design techniques. Scenario based exercises of various situations and topics are covered in order to present practical solutions.

Candidates will be given exercises, practice exams and learning aids to help them attain the ISTQB Advanced Test Analyst qualification.

The exam will be given on the final afternoon of the course. The price of the exam and the attendee qualification fee are included in the price of the course.

Basic Aspects of Software Testing

This general section looks at how testing fits into any development and maintenance activity. A review of different lifecycle models and systems that we need to test.

Testing Process

A look at the generic testing process and the activities that need to take place at each phase of testing.

Risk Based Testing

The session is dedicated to understanding the different types of risk, stages of the risk management process and the importance of stakeholder involvement. Understanding how a risk based test strategy can influence testing.

Reviews

Building on the foundation knowledge of reviews we go further into the principles and types of reviews and how to introduce them into organizations.

Incident Management

When can defects be detected and how the lifecycle of incidents can be applied at each level of testing. We cover examples of the type of metrics you can discover and how they can be used in process improvement.

Test Tools and Automation

The test tool concepts including cost-benefit analysis, strategies for tool deployment. Test tool classifications bringing more detailed considerations to the more common tool types e.g. test management and test execution.

People Skills

We cover the test teams’ communication methods and the importance of communicating the right information in an objective and diplomatic way.


Test Techniques

Specification Based

This section will explain and demonstrate how to use and apply the following test design techniques:
• Equivalence Partitioning
• Boundary Value Analysis
• Decision Tables
• State Transition Testing
• Classification Tree Method
• Pairwise Testing and
• Use Cases

Defect and Experienced Based

This session describes the principles and reasons for defect-based techniques and differentiates their use from specification-based and structure-based techniques. This section also explains using examples the importance of defect taxonomies and their uses. The following defect and experienced-based techniques will be
described and used to generate tests:
• Error Guessing
• Checklist-based
• Exploratory Testing
• Attacks

Candidates will analyze various systems in order to determine which specification-based and defect-based techniques best fit the application being tested.

Test of Software Characteristics

Testing the system’s functionality is an important aspect for every tester, focusing on what the system does. Another vital area for every tester is to test the software’s characteristics – how well it behaves. Analysis of suitable techniques is provided to test the following quality characteristics for the test analyst:
• Accuracy
• Suitability
• Interoperability
• Functional Security
• Usability and
• Accessibility

Other characteristics are explained and the reasons why they need technical testers to design and execute them:
• Technical Security
• Reliability
• Efficiency
• Performance, load, stress and scalability testing
• Maintainability
• Portability