The ISTQB® is developing a new Agile Advanced Level Product – Agile Test Leadership at Scale (ATLaS) as part of the Agile Stream (the stream currently includes the Certified Tester Foundation Level Agile Tester and Certified Tester Advanced Level Agile Technical Tester).
The product is being developed incrementally – the first 2 chapters (of 5 currently planned in total) are now released into the public domain with the hope that feedback will help to hone the product before the certification as a final product is released and also to give stakeholders, including training providers, the opportunity to consider some initial development and to communicate with their markets.
Chapter 1 – Quality Assistance Introduces quality assistance as an approach to quality management that is crucial to developing and sustaining a value-driven organization. It covers how quality assistance as an approach fits with known software testing concepts such as test management, quality control, and quality assurance. Agile Test Leadership at Scale focuses on enabling others in the organization to perform quality and testing responsibilities in order to foster a quality mindset and culture on an organizational level. Therefore, chapter 1 emphasizes 4 important skills to build competencies and scale quality and testing in an organization.
Chapter 2: Quality and Flow in a Value-Driven Organization Establishes methods to facilitate the identification and optimization of development and operational value streams. It describes what a Value Stream is, the notation used and why it is essential to understand the concepts and thinking behind this Lean methodology. How to analyse a Value stream from a quality and testing perspective is described as well as the key metrics used for analyzing a Value Stream. Improve Quality and Flow in a Value-Driven Organization highlights the elimination of waste. Therefore, chapter 2 focuses on value-adding activities and non-value adding activities.
Chapter 3: Continuous Improvement of Quality and Testing
As in the previous two increments the focus in ATLaS is on the organizational level. In this third increment introduces Structured Problem-Solving and certain associated techniques as an approach for supporting Testing and Quality activities across a value stream. It explores System Thinking and the analysis of Root Causes from a quality and testing perspective that improves the value stream as a whole and not just testing. It proposes using Causal Loop Diagrams as a key technique for identifying root causes in a complex environment, leading to the optimization of processes and procedures. This increment further covers conventional stages in causal loop diagramming and how to map the cause and effect of different variables in a system or process flow using basic visualization techniques.
