In this podcast episode, ISTQB president Klaudia Dussa-Zieger explains how the International Software Testing Qualifications Board works and how an ISTQB syllabus comes about. The ISTQB is a worldwide umbrella organization of 68 national member boards that develops and standardizes syllabi for software testers. Its best-known syllabus is the Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL), which version 4.0 has brought much closer to agile practice. Almost all of the work is done by volunteers, and exams are run by independent exam providers.
Key Takeaways
- The ISTQB is made up of 68 national member boards and has recorded more than a million exams and around 800,000 certificates, without a central paid staff behind it: almost all of the work is voluntary.
- CTFL 4.0 replaces the 2018 syllabus and, for the first time, makes agile development practices a core part of the standard curriculum, because most companies have been working in an agile way for years.
- The certificate’s quality rests on a deliberate separation of duties: syllabus authors, training providers and exam providers are three separate roles, so nobody can both train and examine the same candidates.
- Klaudia Dussa-Zieger sees syllabi that stay unchanged for more than a decade as the biggest structural weakness and wants a binding review cycle of five years at most.
What Is the ISTQB and What Does It Stand For?
ISTQB stands for International Software Testing Qualifications Board, a worldwide umbrella organization that defines the software tester’s profession through standardized certifications, each based on its own ISTQB syllabus. Its members are national boards only, which come together under the international umbrella.
The idea took shape more than 20 years ago at a testing conference. Seven countries, among them the UK, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, joined forces to describe a professional profile: what should a tester actually be able to do? Back then, software testing barely existed as a discipline of its own. There were programming courses, but no training for testers.
The key decision was to think internationally from the start. A Certified Tester from Austria carries the same weight as one from Germany, because the same concept sits underneath. The original seven countries have grown into 68 member boards. Some cover a single country, others whole regions such as Southeast Europe or South America.
The whole model runs on volunteers. Apart from a small back office, nobody gets paid. The syllabi, the reviews, the translations: all of it comes from the time and commitment of professionals who take this on alongside their day jobs.
The ISTQB in Numbers
The ISTQB has recorded well over a million exams and close to 800,000 certificates issued. Compared with other certification schemes such as ITIL or the iSAQB programs, the testing profession has no reason to hide.
One product in particular brought the broad breakthrough: the Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL). It is the best-known certificate and has made its way into industry. Job ads list it as a requirement for testers, and many companies train their staff for it specifically.
Klaudia Dussa-Zieger compares the organization to an iceberg. The visible tip is the CTFL and maybe one or two other courses. The far larger part, the organization and all the work behind it, stays out of sight for most people.
Foundation Level 4.0: Closer to Everyday Practice
CTFL 4.0 brings foundation training closer to how the industry actually works, agile development above all. The first version of the syllabus dates from 2001, the previous version 3.1 from 2018. These older versions were built around the V-model and had not yet caught up with the agile world.
Today, most companies work in some agile form, whether with Scrum or other approaches. The new syllabus therefore takes in far more agile content: principles and practices from agile development move into the core product.
The classic methods remain valid. They are simply placed in a new context. Newcomers to the profession benefit most. If agile development is going on all around you, a syllabus that reflects that reality helps you find your feet faster.
Which ISTQB Certificates Come After Foundation Level?
The Foundation Level is the root from which several pillars grow. The CTFL is seen as the ABCs of testing, and everything else builds on it.
The first pillar comes from the classic world:
- Test Manager: test management, effort estimation, project planning, test process improvement. At the time of the conversation (2023), this syllabus was being revised to take agile practice into account.
- Test Analyst: detailed test design techniques, white-box and black-box methods.
- Technical Test Analyst: an overview of non-functional testing areas such as performance, security and usability.
- Above these sits an Expert track.
The second pillar is the specialist syllabi, each with a clearly defined focus. They are meant for anyone who wants to dig into a single topic, such as security testing, performance, usability, AI testing, mobile app testing or the domain-specific automotive testing.
The third pillar is the agile track. It includes Agile Test Leadership at Scale, which covers agile testing in scaled projects with several coordinated release trains. A one-day course is already available, and a two-day extension is in the works.
How an ISTQB Syllabus Is Created
An ISTQB syllabus goes through a multi-stage review process that puts quality ahead of speed. It usually starts with an interest group that thinks a topic matters and wants to work on it.
For Certified Tester AI Testing, for example, there were several groups from Europe, India and the wider Asian region, some of them with syllabus drafts of their own. Three parallel syllabi make no sense in an organization with 68 boards. So the groups sat down together and worked through every learning objective, with plenty of debate and commitment, until they had a single joint syllabus.
The formal process follows fixed steps:
- Agree on the learning objectives, then assign tasks and write the texts.
- Peer review within the group of the merged document.
- Alpha review within the ISTQB. Every comment has to be answered and discussed with the authors.
- Beta review in a wider circle, including training and exam providers outside the organization. This feedback is worked in as well.
- Approval by the General Assembly, the ISTQB’s voting body.
On top of that come technical edits to secure the quality of the language. Only a small share of the contributors are native English speakers, so an editorial layer is needed. The release package includes not just the syllabus but also exam rules, a sample exam and a description.
The process is laborious and slow. That is exactly what secures the quality the certificate is supposed to stand for.
Why ISTQB Work Sometimes Takes Longer
Delays almost always come from the volunteer nature of the work, not from bad intent. Around 98 percent of it is done by volunteers. People block out time and meet, say, for two hours once a week, but that doesn’t always work out.
A lot depends on the task force leader who owns a syllabus. How well that person brings people together and steers the discussions has a noticeable effect on how long things take. Volunteering means a lot of passion and commitment, but also longer cycles.
How a Syllabus Gets into the Local Language
English is the ISTQB’s core language, and every member board has the right to localize the syllabus and sample exam into its own language. It is not mandatory, but it happens regularly.
In the German-speaking countries, the German, Austrian and Swiss boards produce the German versions together. The French, Japanese and Korean boards translate their syllabi too. Localization has its own transition periods, because the boards can only really get started once the beta version is out.
The need is real. Plenty of government agencies develop and test software, and English is still a noticeable barrier there. Translation is not a side job. It is hard work.
How the Knowledge Reaches the Market
The ISTQB itself only produces the syllabi as PDFs. It neither teaches nor examines. Behind it is an ecosystem with a clear separation of duties between three partners.
| Role | Task |
|---|---|
| ISTQB | writes the syllabus, runs marketing and webinars |
| Training provider | creates course materials and exercises, delivers the training |
| Exam provider | runs the exams, organizes rooms, proctors and remote proctoring |
A syllabus is just a document, you can’t teach from it directly. The training providers turn it into actual course materials and exercises. Their materials have to be accredited by the member boards to make sure all content is covered correctly and completely.
Separating training from examination is deliberate. Whoever runs the course should not also run the exam, or every participant would pass automatically. The trainers don’t know the exam questions. That is exactly what keeps the certificate valuable: you can’t just click your way through, you have to put in the work.
“We didn’t want the person who runs the training to also run the exam. The certificate was supposed to stand for a certain quality.”
(Klaudia Dussa-Zieger)
In Germany, the board, training providers and exam providers meet four to five times a year. When industry has an urgent need, for example for big data testing or machine learning testing, it comes back through this channel.
Testing Knowledge Belongs in Universities Too
The ISTQB tries to carry its content beyond industry and into education. In Germany, a dedicated group looks after contacts with universities: it writes to professors, meets them at professional events and makes the CTFL material available free of charge.
More than 50 universities already have a contact person who has received the material. Because of academic freedom, each university decides for itself whether to use it. Several board members teach at universities themselves.
What resonates with students is the mix of theory and insight from real projects. Hearing in class what went well in practice and what went badly sticks far better than method teaching alone.
Other boards are working on this too. The UK board is in talks with the UK Apprenticeship Board about bringing testing content into apprenticeship training. Routes through government bodies like these take a lot of effort and are anything but trivial.
Three Priorities for the Coming Years
The agenda for the coming term rests on three points that Klaudia Dussa-Zieger wants to move forward as president.
First: a more current portfolio. A syllabus that stays unchanged for ten, eleven or twelve years doesn’t keep pace with the industry. A mechanism similar to ISO’s could help, where after five years at the latest someone decides whether a syllabus still fits or needs revising. That also means making the lesser-known syllabi more visible and building links through alliances, for example to requirements engineering or business analysis. Partnerships already exist with IREB and TMMi, and talks with iSAQB are under way.
Second: activate new, younger member boards. The people who founded the ISTQB 20 years ago were in their mid to late thirties then and are correspondingly older now. The organization needs new blood, new ideas and people who bring current technology from university with them. One hurdle: many representatives of the younger boards hardly dare to speak up or ask questions in front of the established names.
Third: support women in testing. The Women in Testing initiative is set to continue, possibly with a focus on individual parts of the world.
