I’m looking to complete the ISTQB CTFL 4.0 Foundation exam this year. I’m figuring it will require around 5 hours a week of study to get me up to scratch for the exam.

I’m lucky that I’m in the SIGiST (Specialist Group in Software Testing) within the British Computer Society (BCS) – and I have a great mentor – the editor of the excellent monthly SIGiST newsletter, The Tester.

There’s a lot of work involved – and especially as the CTFL exam isn’t really my “day job”. It’s all part of my ongoing development to become more rounded in important area of software development. I’ve already started down the DevOps route, and will be doing a Firebrand training boot camp in September – with a view to passing the DevOps Foundation Certificate.

Books and software to cover the study of ISTQB CTFL 4.0

The resources I’ll be using for my CTFL studies are:

  • The Official Handbook “Software Testing“
  • The Self-Taught Software Tester (Chhavi Raj Dosaj) as extra study support, it’s not directly related to the Software Testing course – but the jargon and core concepts will most likely be the same
  • Test Automation – something planned for the future, but I can use it as part of my studies to firm up on core concepts and jargon
  • Moleskine Classic Extended Notebook – what, paper?! Surely not?! For me, it’s absolutely the way to go. All my notes from all resources I’ll be using will go in here..
  • Obsidian (on the screen shown above!) for tidying up my notes from my notebook and “distilling” the main messages (concept sneakily stolen from Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain”).
  • Software Engineering 10th Edition – Sommerville. A fab starter resource for everything software engineering, and an ideal toe-dipper to get me on my way.

I’ve heard mixed things about the overall “worth” of the CTFL qualification. Most of the negatives seem to come from those people that don’t have it. At the very least, the CTFL qualification is the ideal “foot in the door” qualification to get any prospective software tester CVs past the Level 1 “straight to bin” stage.

I’ll be posting my thoughts and progress on this exam in the blog. I hope this content resonates with some of you testers out there.