Practitioner in Agile Quality (PAQ) certification

This is a practitioner’s course. Candidates are expected to have met one of the agile knowledge pre-requisites such as iSQI® Certified Agile Essentials (CAE), iSQI® Certified Scrum Master Pro, ISTQB® Foundation Level Agile Tester OR have 2 years professional experience working in Agile. Due to the practical experiential learning approach to this course, there is assumed knowledge which, if not met, will make it difficult for candidates to complete the course and assessments within the timeboxed course.Candidates are expected to be able to already apply basic practices and techniques, such as:

• Knowledge of Test Design – EP / BVA / State Transition / Decision tables / Exploratory
• Basic test terminology
• Understand the difference between functional and non-functional testing including the basic concepts of Performance and Usability testing
• Perform all the activities associated with the fundamental test process

PAQ is a 3 day experiential exam preparation training course with a focus on honing practical skills that can be implemented back in the workplace.

The exam takes the format of a ‘hands-on’ assessment where candidates are given a product backlog release which includes user stories, associated design documentation plus a ‘multi-drop’ application seeded with defects. Candidates will be given instructions as to what is expected of them during the practical assessment and the opportunity to create the work products required. Each practical assessment will contain 1or 2 additional scenario-based questions requiring written answers (up to 5 questions in total) that cover a selection of competencies. These written answers will be marked along with the answers to the product backlog release by an independent assessor. Assessment duration is 2.5 hours.

Day 1

Agile Manifesto and Principles

• Introduction
• Engineering principles
• Practical exercise
• Faster delivery
• Sprint practical exercise

Day 2

Delivery

• Planning
• Continuous testing
• Build quality in
• Sprint practical exercise
• Mock practical exam

Day 3

Team and Examination

• Debt and TDD
• Agile mindset
• Sprint practical exercise
• Scaleability
• Practical examination  (including scenario)