ISTQB Foundation Level – Acceptance Testing

Foundation level extension and specialist courses are suitable for anyone who is interested in progressing a career in software testing.  This includes people in roles such as testers, test analysts, test engineers, test consultants, test team leads, test managers, user acceptance testers and software developers.  They may also be of interest to anyone who wants a deeper than Foundation level understanding of software testing, such as project managers, quality managers, software development managers, business analysts, product owners, IT directors and management consultants.

The Acceptance Testing course is particularly aimed at testers, business analysts and product owners who either are or expect to be involved in acceptance testing.

To build on Foundation level (CTFL) knowledge by providing a detailed understanding of how testers and business analysts / product owners can collaborate to maximise the effectiveness of acceptance testing.

Validation of the business solution is an important activity for product owners (POs), business analysts (BAs) and testers.  Designing acceptance tests from acceptance criteria is best performed as a highly collaborative activity, involving business analysts and testers, to ensure high business value of the acceptance testing phase and to mitigate the risks of product release.

Supporting this collaborative work, and thereby avoiding a ‘silo effect‘ that will reduce co-operation between product owners / business analysts and testers, is the key objective of this syllabus.

Skills to be Gai­ned

A candidate who achieves ISTQB Acceptance Testing certification should be able to accomplish the following objectives.

For business analysts and product owners:

• Contribute to an organization’s acceptance testing activities by participating in acceptance test design and supporting alignment of the product with the business requirements.
• Contribute to the quality of acceptance testing, including validation and verification of its work products.

For testers:

• Contribute to the definition of acceptance criteria during requirements definition.
• Collaborate efficiently with business analysts and other stakeholders during all acceptance testing activities.
• Understand the business objectives, communicate with business units and share common objectives for acceptance testing.

For everybody:

• Develop and review acceptance criteria for requirements and/or user stories in a collaborative way.
• Apply Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD) techniques.
• Apply the Gherkin language for designing acceptance tests.
• Organize exploratory testing and beta testing session.
• Review business process / rule models specified in BPMN and DMN.
• Use business process / rule models to create acceptance tests.
• Consider usability / user experience, performance efficiency and security when planning and performing acceptance testing.
• Collaborate efficiently with stakeholders in acceptance test activities, including defect reporting and analysis and test status reporting.
• Select relevant tools for acceptance testing.

In order to take the Acceptance Testing certification exam, it is necessary to already have the CTFL core certificate.

The CTFL core certificate is not a pre-requisite for attending this training course.  It is, however, essential that attendees have either obtained it or, at least, have undergone an ISTQB Foundation level training course.  It is further  recommended that delegates also have at least six months’ practical experience of software testing in any type of project, or at least six months’ experience of Business Analysis including some involvement with testing.

Chapter 1: Introduction and Foundations

• fundamental roles of and relationships between testers and BAs
• basic processes of business analysis and testing and their touch points.

Chapter 2: Acceptance Criteria, Acceptance Test Cases and Experience-Based Practices

• writing acceptance criteria
• designing acceptance tests
• experience-based approaches for acceptance testing.

Chapter 3: Business Process and Business Rules Modeling

• modeling business processes and rules with BPMN and DMN
• deriving acceptance tests from business process / business rule models
• business process modeling for acceptance testing.

Chapter 4: Acceptance Testing for Non-Functional Requirements

• introduction to non-functional characteristics and quality in use
• testing for usability and user experience
• testing for performance efficiency
• testing for security.

Chapter 5: Collaborative Acceptance Testing

• the need for collaboration
• activities of acceptance testing, including defect analysis, reporting and quality assurance
• tool support for acceptance testing.

A more detailed list of this course’s content can be found in the official ISTQB syllabus which can be viewed on, and downloaded from, www.istqb.org (go to the Downloads section).

The Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Exam

The Certificate is awarded to those who pass a written one-hour multiple-choice exam of 40 questions that is set, moderated, marked and invigilated by an ISTQB licensed Exam Provider.  Candidates whose native language is not English get an extra 25% time allowance.

We suggest that this exam be taken a few days after the course in order to allow adequate preparation time.

The certification is not included in the course and must be booked separately at FiSTB.