ISTQB Certification

We’ve heard many different opinions about the efficiency and value of an ISTQB certification (Foundation or Advanced level) so we decided to upload this survey on our blog. 

We will gather the results and post them here later on to see if you think getting an ISTQB certification is really worth it. 

What are the common misconceptions regarding test consultancy?

I sometimes hear opinions like: “Test consultants are hired to just click on some links/buttons and they don’t have advanced technical skills”.

The main source for this misconception is the general opinion regarding testers - employees or consultants – generated by software companies that don’t really focus on quality and prefer to hire unskilled/low qualified testers with no knowledge of test planning, design and execution.

The latest experience I had was with a UK company that hired a team of test consultants for their final acceptance testing. At the end of the test round, they were puzzled by the fact that the test consultants were more efficient than the offshore test employees and found a lot of new defects on a product version that was considered stable and ready for release. Most probably, they shared the same misconception, as they were not expecting the test consultants to perform better than their own employees, but to be less efficient and to simply execute some tests.

Another misconception is that test consultants don’t really belong to test team and they tend to be marginalized – they are not invited to all meetings, they don’t have the same working environment, etc. Companies should pay a lot more attention to this and stop calling them “externals”. Consultants are more expensive and they are supposed to perform better than the employees, so companies should not restrain them from doing their job by differentiating them form their own employees in terms of access to all needed information, desks, computers and so on.

The third misconception is that they are too expensive. However, if the quality of the product is too low and the client is not satisfied they may sue you or refuse to pay and find another provider. This will most probably be more costly than hiring a team of test consultants to measure the quality and take the right actions to correct any issues. Test consultants are too expensive only when they are not used properly.

What companies should not hire test consultants?

Most companies would benefit from either test management services that would improve their testing processes, test specialists that would target and test very specific parts of a product or test execution services that would bring fast and objective results. There are a few companies, however, that would be better off not hiring test consultants.

Some companies are so resistant to change and so confident in their own processes and practices that hiring test consultants would not bring any value to their software development activities and their quality.

Software testing alone cannot make software better. Software testing services will help companies identify risks and measure the quality of a product using a set of relevant testing metrics - but still the company/project manager needs to act to improve the level of quality. Doing all the testing tasks in an efficient manner may be a waste of time and money if their results are not taken into account.

Another situation that works against test consultants is that of long projects with no clear schedule and deadlines. In this case, companies should consider recruiting and training a test team rather then calling a test consultancy company, unless this provides recruiting and training services as well.