ISTQB is a bad bad thing

ISTQB is a bad, bad thing. Reeeeeally bad thing. And here is why.

First of all, they certify something there are more than one opinion about. Something that has different approaches. Something that is poorly measurable since it depends on efficiency of decision making process. And decades of IQ testing and similar attempts to measure and control human brain and psyche proved it spectacularly inefficient.

Whatever you can read in ISTQB material is just an opinion and a book would suffice to share it. Unfortunately, royalties that only one or even several books can bring is nothing compared with certification system would bring. Basically, you bypass market competition by forcing people into buying books and paying for exams, and you do it by pressuring their employers into pressuring their employees.

QA Venn Skillset Maps

I would like to share with you this little trick.

I use it every time when I need to find out, how hard it would be to learn something new. You can use it for yourself or for your team members. There are a lot of situations when you may need it, for instance:
-- you are building a matrix of competence, 

-- or calculating the team capacity,

-- you are thinking about taking a different a job, 

-- or starting a new project and not sure if you are up to it,

-- or maybe you are hiring someone and need to assess their skillset.

Average QA expertise can be represented as a Venn-like diagram. As you can see, it consists of three major parts:

• skills related to the test itself (QA): such as QA theory, certain cognitive skills, decision making skills, logic in a broader sense;
• tools-related skillset (Tools): knowing our tools, whatever they are, from test management systems to programming languages;
• knowledge of the domain (Domain): dark secrets of this particular trade, be it banking, telecommunication or IOT.