GUIDELINE - ADVANCED

I firstly want to congratulate you on your ISTQB Foundation certification :)

As you are already aware in Advanced level you have 3 modules (within core part), only criteria to take up these exams is to have "Foundation certification with 3 year of work experience".

There is no order that should be followed to take these exams.Each Advanced Level exam module  has an independent exam, consisting of multiple-choice questions split 'roughly' in line with the Learning Objectives of each chapter. You can randomly chose an exam module you would like to take. Of course which is interesting for you!

1. Test Manager (CTAL - TM)
2. Test Analyst (CTAL - TA)
3. Technical Test Analyst ( CTAL - TTA)

Exam structure of Advanced Modules:

Each question answered correctly scores between one and three points, reflecting the difficulty, and the candidate must reach a score of 65% to pass the exam. The number of questions and exam timing for each module is indicated in the following table.  If the candidate's native language is not the exam language, the exam duration is increased by 25%.

  

Module	No. of Questions	Exam Duration        (min)
Advanced Test Manager – CTAL - TM	65	180
Advanced Test Analyst – CTAL - TA	60	180
Advanced Technical Test Analyst – CTAL - TTA	45	120

      
The Advanced exams cover 3 different K-levels: Understand (K2), Apply (K3) and Analyze (K4). During the exam, only plain paper and simple non-programmable calculators are allowed.

Next obvious question everyone asks themselves is "How to crack exam in first attempt?" here i am going to talk about things that worked for me ( i am sure that also works for everyone if they do it seriously :) ) 

• Taking up training course/workshop
• Preparation by yourself ( post training )

Taking up training course/workshop

I would not say it is mandatory to take up training course, I took it as  my company sponsored it ( otherwise I would not as it is very expensive :P ). I can definitely say its beneficial to have training or workshop as in this module we are going to read more and more about  Test design techniques and advantage of  training/workshop is that you get guidelines to approach and analyze problem to arrive at correct answer.  I am going to talk bit more about training I had, during training we were always divided in small groups to solve/analyze scenario based sample questions, at the end of exercise we noticed every group came up with different set of answers applying exactly the same test design technique. So, just think about it having different answers using same test design technique!!. That is where these kind of trainings help you to understand what was wrong with your approach/analysis or what is the correct way to approach/analyze the problem.

Preparation by yourself (post training )

Preparing by yourself is very important factor for your success, in spite of taking courses/ workshop it is must you read syllabus again and analyze/solve sample questions.

Please follow same strategy as I explained in my previous post of "Foundation exam preparation" when you start reading the book. If you have not read my previous post then i recommend that you read it :)