Test Management Certifications
IIST offers three levels of test management certifications that help testing and quality assurance professionals advance in their test management career. You may click on each certification for more details.
The CTM Certification was developed based on the Test Management Body of Knowledge (TMBOK) to fill the gap in the management skills required by test managers and test leads to effectively manage the test process, the test project and the test organization. Specifically, CTM aims at the following objectives:
- Help individuals develop their test management skills through formal education
- Establish a common skill set for software test managers and test leads based on a well-defined Test Management Body of Knowledge
- Create a pool of qualified software test managers
- Prepare test professionals, especially those who achieved the Certified Software Test Professional - Master Level Certification, for management and lead positions in software testing projects
- Provide professional recognition and career enhancement for those who manage test projects
- Any person who has worked in software testing for at least 3 years
- People with a management or leadership role in testing
- Development managers and development leads who wish to move to a test management or lead position
- Auditors, inspectors, and others who must evaluate the work product of the testing process
- Individuals who successfully completed CSTP - Master Level
Two requirements must be satisfied before the CTM certification can be granted. These are the Formal Education Requirement and Job Experience Requirement.
Formal Education Requirements:Ten days of training as follows:
- Seven days to cover the seven areas of the Test Management Body of Knowledge (TMBOK)
- Three days elective to cover any testing-related or quality-related area. Elective training may also be selected to cover any of the TMBOK in more depth.
Candidates are required to complete a written exam for each course and pass with a level of performance no less than 80%. For courses conducted by IIST, a candidate is allowed to retake the exam for a second time without having to attend the course again. There is a $100 fee for retakes. If 80% performance is not achieved on a second attempt, the candidate must retake the course or take another course covering the same BOK area. If the course failed was taken online you will get access to the online course and a retake exam for $100. If the course was taken on-site or at public training and is available online you can get access to both the online course and retake exam for half the original price of the online course. If the course is failed for a 3rd time and was taken online you will get access to the online course and a retake exam for half the original price of the online course.
Transfer of Credit
A CTM candidate may receive credit for attending courses by providers outside the CTM program for credit towards the CTM certification under any of the following conditions:
- A CTM candidate who has been awarded the Certified Software Test Professional (CSTP) designation may receive a credit for THREE days as elective training towards the CTM certification.
- A CTM candidate who has been awarded the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification may receive a credit for TWO days as elective training towards the CTM certification.
- A CTM candidate may receive credit for courses attended by providers other than IIST for a maximum of TWO days as elective training towards the CTM certification. Candidates must submit evidence of successful completion from a recognized training institution along with detailed course material for evaluation and a certificate of completion. Materials must be accompanied by a fee of $25.00 for each course to be evaluated.
Transfer credit is subject to the following rules:
- A CTM candidate is allowed to transfer credit only based on one of the three conditions listed above.
- The maximum number of training days transferable is three days
- Transfer credits can be used only to satisfy elective training and may not be used to satisfy any Body of Knowledge area.
In order for the CTM certification to be granted, a candidate must have a total of at least three years working in test projects, including 1 year in a lead or management position in areas relevant to testing. This requirement must be completed by the time CTM is granted. This requirement shall be met by means of a letter of support describing the candidate's specific role and responsibilities over a period of three years or more. The letter must be authored and signed by any of the following:
- The candidate's current or former supervisor/manager
- The candidate's client or customer (if self-employed)
- A co-worker currently holding a CTM certification who has worked with the candidate on a testing project.
- Multiple sources may be submitted to cover the three-year period. Any variation from this requirement must be reviewed and approved by the IIST Chairperson.
Upon satisfying both formal education and job experience requirements, a candidate shall submit an application to the IIST Chairperson for the certification to be granted. Application forms can be downloaded be clicking here. The application must be accompanied by payment of the $180 non- refundable graduation fee. This fee covers the cost associated with record-keeping, grading exams, and certification plaque. Please note there will be an additional $100 for shipping plaques outside the U.S.
CTM Re-Certification Requirements Rationale:Based on the objectives of the CTM Certification and in response to the demands imposed on test professionals to handle a wide range of responsibilities using different development environments and technologies, re-certification through continuous education has become necessary. This necessity has also been confirmed by CTM graduates who continuously inquire about a mechanism by which they can further develop skills in more advanced and specialized areas of software testing. In response to this need, the IIST Advisory Board has approved the requirements for re-certification as outlined below.
Formal Education Requirements:CTM Certification will expire 3 years after it is granted. As a result, all CTM holders must complete the re-certification requirements before that time. An applicant for the re-certification shall complete a total of 10 educational units as described in the table below. An applicant must complete at least 4 units from Category A. The remaining units can be completed from Categories B or C. However, the 10 units must not include more than 6 units from Category B or more than 4 units from Category C.
- Classroom courses with written exams.
- Online courses administered by IIST
- Courses are at the discretion of the applicant but must be relevant to the Test Manager role and are subject to approval by IIST
- Each day counts as one unit.
- College level courses on software testing or quality topics taken for credits will count as one unit for each one quarter or semester credit hour.
- Applicants must submit evidence of successful completion of the course and passing the exam.
- Classroom courses with no exam required.
- Courses are at the discretion of the applicant, but must be relevant to the Test Manager role and are subject to approval by IIST
- Course topics are up to the applicant's choice, but must be in software testing or software engineering.
- Each day counts as one unit.
- Applicants must submit evidence of successful completion of the course
Professional development activities that may fall into one of the following activities:
- Presentations at professional conferences; each presentation counts for 2 units
- Publications in professional journal, magazines, or electronic forums; each publication counts for 2 units
- Attending conferences; each day counts as 1/2 unit
- Web-based courses requiring an exam; each course regardless of length counts as 1/2 unit
The following table shows some examples of number of units from each category to complete the re-certification requirements.
Activities that qualify for each of the categories are described above. In order to count toward re-certification units, activities must be performed during the re-certification period. Evaluation of all activities will be at the discretion of the IIST Chairman.
An applicant for re-certification may submit Non-IIST courses for pre-evaluation for credits. An applicant must submit evidence of successful completion from a recognized training institution along with detailed course material for evaluation. The fee for this evaluation is $25 per course.
- 4
- 6
- 5
- 4
- 10
- 8
- 2
- 2
- 5
- 6
- 0
- 0
- 4
- 2
- 0
- 0
- 0
- 2
An applicant shall provide evidence that he or she has continued performing job responsibilities in software testing or related areas. This requirement may be satisfied through a letter from the applicant's manager describing the specific activities performed over the specified period of time.
Application:An applicant for re-certification shall submit the CTM re-certification Application to the Chairman of IIST accompanied by evidence of completing both the educational and experience requirements and $180 processing fee no later than 60 days before the date the certification expires. The CTM re-certification Application form can be downloaded from our web site at http://www.iist.org/certification.php.
The CTM Body of Knowledge- Effort estimation
- Quality policies, processes, and standards
- Defining quality goals
- Process definition
- Process control
- Process documentation
- Relationship with service management infrastructure processes (incident management, problem management, configuration management, change management, release management, etc.)
- Best practices, including use of both static and dynamic testing
- Test processes for different development models (XP, RAD, JAD, waterfall, etc.)
See course selection
- Resource management.
- Staffing, hiring, contracting, and reviewing performance.
- Equipment, facilities, hardware, and software resource management
- Politics
- Training and career development
Ethics - Team building and retention
- Compensation
- Budgeting
- Presentation skills including data preparation
See course selection
- Quality Assurance Vs Quality Control
- Defining processes
- Implementing Quality Assurance
- Developing effective standards
- Inspections and review of artifacts other than code
- Development and Test lifecycles and methodologies
- QA concepts, methods and approaches Prominent quality assurance model such as:
- CMM/CMMI
- Six Sigma
- IEEE standards
- TQM
- ISO
- ROI justification for Quality Assurance
- Quality Assurance according to W. Edwards Deming
- Quality Assurance for modern development methodologies: RAD, Agile and eXtreme
- Independent Verification and Validation
See course selection
- Test planning
- Effort estimation
- Task identification
- Scheduling
- Tracking
- Reporting
- Resource allocation (people, hardware, software, and facilities)
- Identification of roles and responsibilities
- Project controls
- Financial analysis and ROI
- Metric tracking and presentation
- Presentation skills
- Using GANTT/PERT charts and other project management techniques
- Using automated project management tools
- Directing, supervising, and assessing individuals' performance
- Leadership
See course selection
- Risk analysis methodologies
- Risk identification, classification, and prioritization
- Calculating costs and probability
- Risk reporting
- Monitoring and controlling risks
- Contingency planning and mitigation
- Risk-based test planning and management: sizing and resource planning
See course selection
- Test coverage analysis
- Incident tracking and management
- Defining and capturing test measurements
- Basic "best practices" development metrics
- Alternative measurement goal-setting with the Basili goal/question/metric paradigm
- Test maturity models
- Establishing process goals
- Performing assessments and using surveys
- Benchmarking
- Overview of process improvement models such as CMM/CMMI, Six Sigma, TQM, ISO, etc.
- Overview of the applicable IEEE documentation standard
See course selection
- Defining a test automation strategy and plan
- Test tool evaluation and selection
- Build it vs. Buy it: automation strategies approaches
- Developing skills and relevant test automation roles
- Long term maintenance considerations
- Selecting which tests to automate and converting from manual to automated
- Calculating ROI of automation
- Building a performance test team
- Process automation and metric analysis
- Test environments - test data, architecture, security, networks, etc.
- Categories of automated tools that can be used to aid testing
See course selection
