Advancing the State of the Art in Automotive Software Testing by Certification

Testing is the most important activity in quality assurance for software. To ensure that there are enough qualified testers to do the testing, and to make sure that these testers are well trained, the International Software Qualification Board (ISTQB®) introduced the Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL®) in 2002. The CTFL program aims at ensuring that all certified testers have a common understanding of software testing - independent of the product domain. So far, more than 500,000 testers worldwide passed the CTFL certification.However, each product domain has specific characteristics and constraints that must be considered when qualifying testers for that domain. This applies especially to the automotive domain, which has international and national regulations, standards, and technologies. These have a high impact on automotive software testing. Additionally, with the introduction of electric, connected and autonomous vehicles, the amount of software in the car is rising significantly. The ISTQB is introducing an add-on qualification to the CTFL for the automotive domain: the CTFL Specialist Automotive Software Tester (CTFL-AuT). The CTFL-AuT gives testers with a CTFL all the necessary background and additional skills for the automotive domain. This paper describes the objectives, the content, and first experiences with the CTFL-AuT qualification program.