It could be a very short post where I say just write notes and watch this channel, but I have an additional variable that is supposed to have place according to ISTQB recommendations but not so actual for market reality: I don’t have a technical/IT background. I wasn’t currently working and didn’t have an understanding of processes. Also understanding abstract, theoretical topics is hard for me personally. I’m more a practical/applied person, I will remember something better by doing/solving tasks that make me proficient at applied sciences like math and physics but absolutely stupid with humanitarian subjects like philosophy and economics. Especially, when there are a lot of boring formal words and dry numbers. Especially, when my partner working in IT says that this theory is quite far from reality (sounds unmotivational).
So let’s begin!
My learning plan consisted of watching YouTube “course”, make notes from a syllabus, and watching the same course again. Why? I will explain.
My goal was to understand the material, not just memorize it (otherwise what’s the point?). Passing the exam with a high score would be a pleasant bonus.
1st course watch
I watched videos from the TM SQUARE YouTube channel. It’s not a promotion, Neeraj just had the best videos at that moment and the most understandable speech for me personally.
In this step, I gained an understanding of the exam structure. What kinds of questions there are? How questions are built? Where they will try to catch you? (believe me, they will a lot!). It’s also hard to pass the exam without training because there is no practical information about decision and statement testing in the syllabus. But Neeraj gives this information on slides.
Syllabus processing
Why I did that?
I believe in neuroscience and actively use the applied/behavioral part of it. Writing down, sometimes with your own words, helps you to understand topics that are hard to understand if you just read them. It helps to process information better, to focus on it.
It also helped me to learn and understand new and testing-related words that I don’t use in everyday life, like “assess”, “cohesion”, “implementation”, “taxonomy”, etc. It was important for me because English is not my mother tongue. It really helped me to sound more professional!
I also kept Test Activities in one place by cohesion of 1st and 5th chapters. It’s much easier to read about objectives, activities, and work products in one place than constantly jumping from one page to another. It creates a solid “unit” of information in your head.
TIP: leave space for additions. Better more than less. I will explain later.
Course rewatch
I did that because I understood only half of it at first (no tech background, remember). And after conspecting I did understand everything and it helped me to refresh my memory. In this step, I added all tricks, like formulas for decision and statement techniques and practical task solutions to my writings. Use empty spaces here!
Practice, Practice, Practice
My objectives of doing mocks/samples were:
• to have a better understanding of questions structure
• to assess the level of knowledge of topics and discover topics to repeat/recover
• to evaluate if extra time is necessary
• to train my eyes to find points they use to trick candidates. To pay special attention to that
• to train different test techniques tasks to be not caught off guard by a different statement of question or condition.
TIP: go to “Find an Exam Provider” on the ISTQB Foundation page and visit all websites there. There are samples in different versions. Yes, some of them are the same. Some of them are old. But I had 5 of them in the end, not 3 like on the official page. Of course, solve old versions first.
Create an exam environment. Use timer.
Important: update your notes! Write what you missed. Happily, there are really great explanations and term descriptions in the answers files. I didn’t have to rewrite the glossary because of that.
General Tips I used:
Use neuroscience:
• Mnemonics. I love to use associations. It’s a great way to remember information easily. Like LEAD for objectives of a pilot project for testing tools. EM… (or ehm - interjection) for human-prone mistakes.
• Sleep. Have a good sleep really. Sleep over topics that you don’t understand. You will understand them in the morning or a couple days later. Works like magic. But in reality, it’s just a brain processing.
• It’s also recommended to learn just before sleeping or have naps during the day to better learn something. To let the brain process the information. To put it in a long-term memory. It helps with not being distracted/overloaded with other information that can affect the process of memorization. And to restore cognitive abilities.
• Remember about the learning curve. Don’t stretch it. Repeat.
During exam
By solving samples I developed a strategy. I learned to read questions fast and see the main points. And decided to leave questions for later if I see that they are extensive or complicated (it’s just 1 point per question, but you can miss 2-3 questions if stuck on a big one).
I remember one question with a decision table, and I was so confused. Usually, you have true/false conditions there, but there was not so straight condition in one of the test cases. It was something like “in process”. And it was hard to understand how it is considered to be, is it true, is it false? Because it really depends, what if the system just thinking and you will receive an error? It’s not a “true” then. Some questions are needed to have an understanding of different systems, like for example credit/debit cards (I don’t have a credit card, so I didn’t know that you don’t need a pin there!). What if you don’t have such an understanding? Here a good strategy was to eliminate answers that are not suitable instead of looking for the correct one.
TIP: memorize test estimation techniques for agile and sequential models. I haven’t paid attention to that and was caught!
I would lie if I say that I was calm as a monk. No. I was a live representation of the song “You Spin Me Round” - so many circles I’ve made around calmly sitting men. Maybe because of that, I was put in exam place first :D Nevertheless, I’ve passed with a 90% score.
Good luck!