The ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) General Assembly has approved the new Acceptance Testing –specialist module syllabus for general release. This Acceptance Testing syllabus is joint effort between ISTQB and IQBBA (International Qualification Board for Business Analysis). This syllabus will facilitate the efficiency of acceptance testing through the joint training of business analysts / product owners and testers.
Assessment and validation of the business solution are important and frequent activities of product owners (POs), business analysts (BAs) and testers. Part of their responsibilities is to define acceptance criteria for the requirements, regardless of the type of development lifecycle, Agile or traditional. Acceptance criteria are defined by decomposing the requirements into a more atomic and testable form. Test cases are then designed to verify the solution against the criteria. Designing acceptance tests from acceptance criteria should be a highly collaborative activity, involving business analysts and testers, to ensure high business value of the acceptance testing phase, and mitigating the risks related to product release. Supporting this collaborative work, and thereby avoiding the silo effect between product owners/ business analysts and testers, is the key objective of this syllabus. This acceptance testing qualification is aimed at anyone involved in software acceptance testing activities. This includes people in roles such as product owners, business analysts, testers, test analysts, test engineers, test consultants, test managers, user acceptance testers, and software developers.