ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) v4.0 Exam Prep

What's inside

1. Level 1: The CTFL v4.0 Exam and How to Use This CourseFree
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Orients the learner to the exam (40 multiple-choice questions, 60 minutes, 26 correct to pass), to the six chapters and their K1 to K3 learning levels, and to the fact that the syllabus is ISTQB's copyright and is not reproduced here, so the current syllabus, sample exams and glossary should be downloaded free from istqb.org and read beside this independent, non-accredited course, which promises no pass.
2. Level 2: What Testing Is: Objectives, Testing vs DebuggingFree
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Builds from first principles what software testing is, including test objects, the typical test objectives and the difference between verification and validation, and separates testing from debugging.
3. Level 3: Why Testing Is Necessary: QA, Errors, Defects, Failures
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Explains how testing contributes to success, how testing as product-oriented quality control differs from process-oriented quality assurance, and how a human error leads to a defect, a failure and back to a root cause.
4. Level 4: The Seven Testing Principles
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Explains each of the seven testing principles and how exam questions disguise them in scenarios.
5. Level 5: Test Activities and the Test Process in Context
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Walks through the test activities and tasks (test planning, test monitoring and control, test analysis, test design, test implementation, test execution and test completion) and the contextual factors that shape how they are carried out.
6. Level 6: Testware, Traceability and Test Roles
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Covers the testware each test activity produces, the value of traceability between the test basis and testware, and the two principal roles: the test management role and the testing role.
7. Level 7: Tester Skills, Whole-Team Approach and Independence
   [Fundamentals of Testing] Examines the generic skills a tester needs, including constructive communication about defects, the whole-team approach, and the benefits and drawbacks of independence of testing.
8. Level 8: How the SDLC Shapes Testing
   [Testing throughout the SDLC] Introduces software development lifecycle models (sequential, iterative and incremental) and explains how the chosen model affects testing, together with the good testing practices that hold in any lifecycle.
9. Level 9: Test-First, DevOps, Shift Left and Retrospectives
   [Testing throughout the SDLC] Covers testing as a driver for development (TDD, ATDD and BDD), the effect of DevOps and CI/CD pipelines on testing, the shift left approach, and how retrospectives improve the process.
10. Level 10: The Five Test Levels
    [Testing throughout the SDLC] Distinguishes component testing, component integration testing, system testing, system integration testing and acceptance testing by their test object, objectives, test basis, typical defects and responsibilities.
11. Level 11: Test Types: Functional, Non-Functional, Black, White
    [Testing throughout the SDLC] Distinguishes functional testing, non-functional testing, black-box testing and white-box testing, and shows that any test type can be applied at any test level.
12. Level 12: Confirmation, Regression and Maintenance Testing
    [Testing throughout the SDLC] Separates confirmation testing from regression testing and explains maintenance testing, its triggers and the role of impact analysis.
13. Level 13: Static Testing Basics: Value and Static vs Dynamic
    [Static Testing] Introduces static testing (reviews and static analysis), the work products it can examine, the value it brings, and how it differs from and complements dynamic testing.
14. Level 14: Early Feedback, the Review Process and Review Roles
    [Static Testing] Explains the benefits of early and frequent stakeholder feedback, the activities of the review process (planning, review initiation, individual review, communication and analysis, fixing and reporting) and the responsibilities of each review role.
15. Level 15: Review Types and Success Factors
    [Static Testing] Compares the informal review, walkthrough, technical review and inspection by their formality, leadership and objectives, and identifies the factors that make reviews succeed.
16. Level 16: The Three Families of Test Techniques
    [Test Analysis and Design] Opens Chapter 4, the most heavily weighted chapter, by distinguishing black-box, white-box and experience-based test techniques and showing how techniques support test analysis and test design.
17. Level 17: Equivalence Partitioning: Finding the Partitions
    [Test Analysis and Design] Teaches equivalence partitioning for a single parameter from first principles: dividing data into partitions whose members are expected to be processed in the same way, telling valid from invalid partitions, and calculating coverage.
18. Level 18: Equivalence Partitioning with Several Parameters
    [Test Analysis and Design] Extends equivalence partitioning to test objects with several sets of partitions, using Each Choice coverage to combine them and working exam-style K3 questions.
19. Level 19: Boundary Value Analysis: The 2-Value Technique
    [Test Analysis and Design] Introduces boundary value analysis for ordered partitions and the 2-value version, in which each boundary value and its closest neighbour in the adjacent partition are coverage items.
20. Level 20: Boundary Value Analysis: The 3-Value Technique
    [Test Analysis and Design] Teaches the 3-value version of boundary value analysis, in which each boundary value and both of its neighbours are coverage items, and compares its rigor with the 2-value version.
21. Level 21: Decision Table Testing: Conditions, Actions, Rules
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn to turn a set of business rules into a decision table whose columns each pair one combination of conditions with the actions the system should take.
22. Level 22: Decision Table Testing: Minimising and Coverage
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn to simplify a decision table by removing infeasible columns and merging columns where a condition does not affect the outcome, then derive test cases and calculate decision table coverage.
23. Level 23: State Transition Testing: Diagrams and Tables
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn to model behaviour that depends on history as states, events, guard conditions and actions, shown either as a state transition diagram or as a state table.
24. Level 24: State Transition Testing: Three Coverage Criteria
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn to design test cases as sequences of events and to measure them against all states coverage, valid transitions coverage (0-switch coverage) and all transitions coverage.
25. Level 25: Statement Testing and Statement Coverage
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn what white-box testing is and how statement testing designs test cases to execute the executable statements in code, measured as statement coverage.
26. Level 26: Branch Testing and the Value of White-Box Testing
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn how branch testing exercises the transfers of control in a control flow graph, both conditional and unconditional, how branch coverage relates to statement coverage, and what white-box testing adds that black-box testing cannot.
27. Level 27: Error Guessing and Fault Attacks
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn how experience-based test techniques differ from black-box and white-box ones, and how error guessing uses a tester's knowledge of likely errors, defects and failures to target tests.
28. Level 28: Exploratory Testing and Session-Based Testing
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn how exploratory testing designs, executes and evaluates tests at the same time while the tester learns about the test object, and how session-based testing gives it structure.
29. Level 29: Checklist-Based Testing
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn how a tester designs, implements and executes tests to cover the test conditions listed on a checklist, and what makes a checklist item good or poor.
30. Level 30: User Stories and Acceptance Criteria
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn how collaborative user story writing produces a shared understanding of a feature, and how acceptance criteria state the conditions a story's implementation must meet to be accepted.
31. Level 31: Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)
    [Test Analysis and Design] Learn to apply ATDD, a test-first approach in which test cases are derived from acceptance criteria before the user story is implemented.
32. Level 32: The Test Plan: Purpose and Content
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn what a test plan is for and what it typically contains, and why the act of planning is valuable in itself.
33. Level 33: Release and Iteration Planning, Entry and Exit Criteria
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn what a tester contributes to release planning and iteration planning, and how entry criteria and exit criteria control when a test activity may start and when it can be declared finished.
34. Level 34: Estimating Test Effort: Four Techniques
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn to estimate test effort using estimation based on ratios, extrapolation, Wideband Delphi (including Planning Poker) and three-point estimation.
35. Level 35: Prioritizing Test Cases
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn to order test cases for execution using risk-based, coverage-based and requirements-based prioritization, and to adjust that order for dependencies and resource availability.
36. Level 36: The Test Pyramid
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn the test pyramid as a model showing that tests differ in granularity, and how it guides the amount of test automation at each level.
37. Level 37: The Testing Quadrants
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn the testing quadrants, which group test levels and test types in Agile development along two axes: business-facing or technology-facing, and supporting the team or critiquing the product.
38. Level 38: Risk: Likelihood, Impact, Project and Product Risks
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn what a risk is, how risk likelihood and risk impact combine into a risk level, and how project risks differ from product risks.
39. Level 39: Product Risk Analysis
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn how product risk analysis, made up of risk identification and risk assessment, directs test effort so that the residual product risk is as low as possible.
40. Level 40: Product Risk Control
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn how product risk control follows risk analysis through risk mitigation and risk monitoring, and what actions are available to respond to an analysed risk.
41. Level 41: Test Monitoring, Test Control, Test Completion and Metrics
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn how test monitoring gathers information about progress, how test control turns that information into corrective actions, what test completion does at project milestones, and which categories of test metrics (progress, test progress, product quality, defect, risk, coverage and cost) feed all three.
42. Level 42: Test Progress and Test Completion Reports and Status
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn the purpose, typical content and audience of test progress reports and test completion reports, and how to communicate test status through the most suitable channel for each stakeholder and situation.
43. Level 43: Configuration Management in Support of Testing
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn how configuration management identifies, controls and tracks test items and testware as configuration items, with versions, baselines and traceability, so that tests and results can be reproduced.
44. Level 44: Defect Management and Writing a Defect Report
    [Managing the Test Activities] Learn how reported anomalies are handled through a defect management workflow from discovery to closure, and practise writing a defect report that gives enough information to resolve the issue.
45. Level 45: Test Tools and Test Automation: Benefits and Risks
    [Test Tools] Learn the kinds of tool that support different test activities and weigh the potential benefits of test automation against its risks.
46. Level 46: Timed Mock Exam: 40 Questions in 60 Minutes Timed mock
    [All six chapters] A timed mock exam of 40 original multiple-choice questions in 60 minutes with a pass mark of 26, testing all six syllabus chapters in exam proportion at K1 to K3, with every distractor explained and no promise of a pass in the real exam.

Access

The first 2 levels are free with a free account. Every level, the podcast edition and the AI tutor come with All Access at £4.99/month or any Creator plan — see pricing.

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