ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Level Test Management

Overview

The CTAL‑TM v3.0 certification equips participants to manage software testing across the development lifecycle. It covers strategic test planning, risk‑based testing, team management, test tools, and process improvement.

Prerequisites

Participants should have:

• ISTQB Foundation Level certificate (v4.0 or earlier)
• Recommended minimum six months’ experience in software testing or development

Target Audience

This course is designed for:

• Test managers
• Test leads
• QA managers
• Project and product owners
• Scrum masters
• Senior testers

Objectives

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Manage testing across lifecycle models
• Define risk‑based test strategies aligned with organisational goals
• Plan, monitor, control, and complete testing through clear metrics and controls
• Estimate effort using metric‑ and expert‑based techniques
• Design defect workflows and manage defect resolution effectively
• Build and lead skilled test teams, managing roles, competencies, and motivation
• Communicate stakeholder value through business cases, test metrics, and reporting
• Drive process improvement, leverage test tools across contexts

Outline

Chapter 1: Managing the Test Activities

• The test process: planning, monitoring, controlling, completion
• Context of testing in waterfall, agile, hybrid models
• Test stakeholders and their roles
• Risk‑based testing: identification, assessment, mitigation, metrics
• Project test strategy: objectives, approach aligned to organisation
• Improving the test process: retrospectives & continuous lessons learned
• Test tools: tool introduction, selection, organisation
  

Chapter 2: Managing the Product

• Test metrics: define, collect, interpret for control and reporting
• Test estimation: metric‑based and expert‑based techniques
• Defect management: workflows and statistics for process improvement
  

Chapter 3: Managing the Team

• The test team: competency mapping, roles, performance development
• Stakeholder relationships: cost‑benefit analysis, business case for testing
• Motivational factors: leadership, team dynamics, hygiene and motivators

Exams and Assessments

• Format: 50 multiple-choice questions.
• Duration: 120 minutes (+ extra time for non-native English speakers).
• Passing Score: 65% required to pass.
• Certification: ISTQB Advanced Level Test Management certification

Hands-On Learning

• Risk identification workshops, test planning scenarios
• Metric design and dashboard exercises
• Defect lifecycle mapping and data-driven improvement
• Team skills assessment, roles, and motivational strategy exercises
• Tool evaluation and retrospective simulations