QA stuff certification? Why/where/how?

Question

We are looking for ways to certificate our QA department. What courses/certificates could you recommend?

What QA certificates are respected (in Europ/world wide)? Did you pass any QA certification ... was it worth the effort/money? Perhaps there are some certificates you do not recommend?

Any other useful info is appreciated.

Answer 1

The most relevant QA certificate I know for Europe is ISO9001 (applies to the company not the QA team).

From my experience and talks with friends when a company wants to get this kind of certificate several objectives are followed:

1. At marketing level it might be good to be able to put this "label"
2. Some customers might want this kind of certificate in order to contract you
3. You really want to improve your Q&A

A lot of companies are only focusing on the two first points and basically the Q&A team write procedures that the teams will need to learn a few days before the authority audit ... Once they have the certificate they just forgot about them :-(

If you are not interested in the first two points, the other way to go is to get the spirit of these certifications and try to introduce it little by little in the company. The main point is to write procedures. If you are in a small company this is very important. Indeed if some important people become unavailable (leave the company, get sick for a long period of time) then you should be able using the procedures to replace them. One other important point from my point of view is that procedures should be written with people who will apply them. Don't try to force people (specially developers :-)) to follow procedures they do not agree on.

Hope I did understand well your question and that it helps

Answer 2

Hi, If you are looking to get certified for the tools there are mercury (HP) certifications for winrunner, qtp, testdirector etc. which has value if you use those tools.

If you are looking for QA related certifications, there are SQA, CSQA certifications about which you can find more info on http://www.softwarecertifications.org.

If you really want to stay current with what is happening in the world of QA and testing then conferences and seminars hosted by different organizations and sometime by mercury could be really useful.

Answer 3

Hey. For general tester/QA certification try ISEB or ISTQB (I would opt for ISTQB). You could try also TMap (especially TMapNext) but it will be harder. For specialized certifications try courses from HP or IBM.