Foreword

The success of our book Software Testing Foundations greatly encouraged us to write a second book, this time building on the foundation level to address the advanced courses and still provide the same mix of theory and practice the first book contained. We, Tilo Linz and Andreas Spillner, were glad to win Thomas Rossner of imbus AG and Mario Winter of the Cologne University of Applied Sciences as coauthors for this book. All four of us hope that we have yet again succeeded in covering the present topics, from both the theoretical and the practical perspective.

The content of this book on test management conforms to the syllabus of the Certification Course “Advanced Level: Test Manager” (Version 1.2, [URL: ISTQB] -Syllabi). In some places, however, we found it expedient to go beyond the scope of that syllabus and provide the reader with additional advice and information. As a result, this book has become rather more comprehensive than the ISTQB syllabus.

Current syllabus

The training scheme based on the ISTQB Certified Tester Standard [URL: ISTQB] has been well received in many countries. So far, approximately 50,000 Foundation Level examinations and approximately 1,500 examinations on the Advanced Level syllabus (April 2007) have been held.

ISTQB-Standard

Currently, more than 25 nations are represented in the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB, [URL: ISTQB]).

Worldwide recognition

Thus, the number of participating countries has almost doubled in the past two years. Representatives from the following countries or national testing boards cooperate in the ISTQB: Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latin America, Netherlands/Belgium, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Eastern Europe, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the United States, and Australia/New Zealand.

The ISTQB has become truly international, with syllabi and certificates that are recognized worldwide. See chapter 1 for further details on the structure of the ISTQB.

The contents of the Foundation Level syllabus have been adopted by many universities and colleges in Germany. It appears that in higher education, we are seeing the emergence of a common syllabus in the field of software testing. The number of college and university students interested in this field has been increasing steadily over the past years.

Higher education

In software testing, we have now covered a good distance toward our goal, which was formulated by David Parnas in his foreword to the first edition of the German book Basiswissen Softwaretest as being the standardization and regulation of the educational content in the field of informatics.

We want to thank our readers of the German version of this book for their helpful comments and our colleagues in the GTB (German Testing Board) and ISTQB, without whose great work there would be no Certified Tester scheme. We want to cordially thank Stephan Goericke, Tim Koomen, and Hans Schaefer for their forwards.

Thank you notes

Andreas Spillner, Thomas Rossner, Mario Winter, Tilo Linz
Bremen, Möhrendorf, and Wuppertal
April 2007