“Developers with testing skills are in high demand, and the market is empty.”
(Richard Seidl)
The A4Q SDET certification (Software Development Engineer in Test) is a qualification from the German Testing Board and A4Q. It teaches developers the testing content from CTFL and CTAL-TTA that actually matters to them, with hands-on exercises that work directly with source code and specifications.
I have been supporting teams and companies on their agile journey for many years now. It is still a wonderful moment every time the walls that have grown up between roles and professions come down, and collaboration and productivity get a real boost as a result.
For me, this is most visible in software testing. Teams used to be strictly separated: the test team over here, the development team over there, with all the conflicts, finger-pointing and friction that came with it. Today that expertise is growing together more and more. With the right support through mentoring and training, the magic happens: quality and testing expertise become the everyday practice of the entire (!) team. Quality becomes an attitude.
Building Testing Skills Across the Whole Team
For mentoring or coaching, teams often start by adding a tester. That’s a good start, but you have to make sure the team doesn’t slip into a dynamic like “hey look, a tester, so the rest of us don’t need to worry about quality anymore.” Because the real goal is to build testing skills across the whole team!
That leaves equipping your own developers with testing skills. For most software developers, though, a course like the ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) is too abstract and packed with topics like test management that have little to do with a developer’s daily work. Interestingly, earlier CTFL syllabi and exams applied the material directly to source code and were quite suitable for developers. Over time, though, the technical know-how was pushed out of the CTFL.
What the SDET Certification Covers
The “A4Q Software Development Engineer in Test” (SDET) certification, which I took a closer look at, sets out to close exactly this gap. It was developed jointly by the German Testing Board (GTB) and the Alliance for Qualification (A4Q) and covers precisely the CTFL content that is relevant to software developers:
- Why test at all?
- What do I test in my development process, and how?
- What do static analysis and reviews bring?
- How do I write good test cases, in other words, which test design techniques are there?
The content goes deeper with components from the ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Level Technical Test Analyst (CTAL-TTA). To make the transfer into everyday development work more tangible, practical exercises work directly with source code and specifications.
A Bridge Between Development and Testing
In my view, the SDET certification builds an important bridge between software developers and tester skills. Developers with testing skills are in high demand, and the market is empty. The huge rise in demand for test automation in recent years has made things even tighter. Upskilling the people you already have is a sensible step.
And in the end, it’s one more step toward a whole, integrated team, less siloed knowledge and more exchange on equal footing!
