What are different characteristics of Certified Manager of Software Testing (CMST)?

CMST or certified manager of software testing as it is known in expanded form, sets up a standard for the certified professionals and individuals which are working or will be working in the field of software testing.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CMSQ
- These standards are worldwide and are meant to be followed everywhere irrespective of the place where the certified individuals and professionals are working.

- This certification is aimed at testing the competencies and capabilities of the skilled individuals and professionals.

- Like other certifications such as CMSQ, CASQ etc acquiring the certification of CMST also shows the professional competency of the certified individual or professional.

- This professional competency is concerned with the certified individual’s skill to demonstrate the capabilities required for managing the process of software testing and also practices and principles he follows while carrying out the software testing.

- This certification is used by the upper management of information technology as a way for predicting the likelihood of a candidate getting success with regard to qualification.

- It can be thought of as a way to determine the capabilities and skills of the candidates applying for the positions of management level.

- Apart from this CMST certification provides the candidates and professionals with an assessment of their skills and capabilities concerning management.

- The provided assessment is highly objective in nature.

- The examination for this certification is available in many countries worldwide.

Like for other certifications, this certification also demands some prerequisites. They have been mentioned below:

1. The applicant must have an active certification of CSTE. This prerequisite is not compulsory but a recommendation. The applicants having CSTE certification will be first preference.

2.The applicant must be working in the field of software testing and must have good experience.

3.The applicant must have experience in demonstrating the skills required for software testing and identified by CBOK or common body of knowledge.

4.The applicant must submit the documents regarding his real world experience in the field of software testing.

5.The applicant must be prepared for the exam of management level.

6.He/ she must fulfil any one of three prerequisites mentioned below:

(a) he/ she must have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited and reputed institution along with an experience of 4 years in the field of software testing.

(b) He/ she must have an associate degree along with an experience of 6 years in the field of software testing.

(c) If he/ she don’t have any degree, must have an experience of 8 years in the field of software testing.

7.He/she should follow the guidelines laid down by the code of ethics.

GUIDELINES FOR CMSQ APPLICANT
- Every skilled individual and professional is expected to follow the code of ethics behavior guideline.

- It is a must that he/ she adhere to the code of ethics.

- Depending on the bio data and resume submitted by the applicant, he /she can be asked for additional documents providing details of his/ her education and employment history.

- If the applicant fails to provide the demanded documents, he/ she may get disqualified.

- The exam aims at assessing the practical knowledge of the applicant regarding the following aspects:

1.Management of test
2.Analysis of test
3.Test planning
4.Test execution
5.Relationships
6.Communication skills

- If the applicant is having an active certification of CSTE at the timing of applying for CMST certification, then his/ her CSTE certification will remain active along with CMST certification.

This certification program has the following benefits:
- It evaluates skill mastery on the basis of the skills associated with the management of software testing.

- It inculcates a will in one to improve one’s professional ability.

- It acknowledges the competency of the individual in the field of management.

- It helps the organizations to select individuals with good professional and competency rates.

- It helps improve software testing programs.

What are different concepts of Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA)?

Certified software quality analyst or CSQA as it is known in short form, is the certification that checks the software quality analysing capabilities and skills of an individual who applies for it.

Certified software quality analyst certification is gaining fast popularity in the field of software testing these days. Number of CSQA aspirants is growing day by day. More and more skilled individuals are now seeking to get this certification.

The certified software quality analysts use the principles of quality analysing in assessing the quality of the software. CSQA plays a great role in building up the reputation of an organization since it helps in improving the quality of the software products that it manufactures.

CSQA certification provides three main benefits.They have been mentioned below:

- It gives an acknowledgement about the skills and competency of the certified individual or professional.
- It proves to be a great factor in helping the deserving individual in getting job, promotion and good hike in salary.
- He/ she can continue his/ her education after fulfilling the re-certification requirements.

The duration of exam is 4 hours but it if you get qualified you will have great benefits. There are certain things that you need to fulfil before appearing for the examination.

These include:

- The candidate needs to fulfil all the prerequisites as laid down by the CSQA certification norms.
- The applicant needs to abide by the guidelines stated by the code of ethics and stick to them while discharging their duties.
- The applicant needs to submit a document for character reference along with the exam form.

An individual or professional can hold CSQA certification only for 3 years at a time and after that he/ she need to get re-certification for the same. This can be done by the following procedure:

- The applicant needs to submit a recertification journal which gives an account on the qualified educational activities by the professionals.
- The applicant may appear for a recertification exam.

What does this certification do?
- This certification tests the principles and practices that an individual or a professional follows regarding the management of good quality.

- CBOK only helps with understanding of concepts but does not provide any practical knowledge and experience.

- CSQA aims to test the ability of an individual to face the real world challenges.

- Most of the aspirants don’t know how to approach CSQA exam. It is just like a regular exam but with a more need of practical knowledge and awareness.

Try to understand the concepts listed in CBOK properly. You can also prepare questions for testing your preparation. While studying a concept, you need to relate those concepts to the real world challenge as to how you will use them in solving real world problems.

The candidate needs to meet any one of the following condition:

- A bachelor’s degree from a reputed and accredited institution along with an experience of 2 years.
- An associate degree along an experience of 4 years.
- If the applicant is not having any degree, he/ she must have an experience of 6 years minimum.

The aspirants must learn to adhere to the code of ethics. It is very important not abide by the code of ethics as it defines the behaviour that is expected from a professional. Depending up on your compliance, you may require submitting your education and employment documents. If you fail to submit, then you may be disqualified. To abide by the code of ethics is extremely important as one can even be subjected to decertification if his/her conduct is not good.

Overview of QuickTest Professional and its features

Mercury Interactive's QuickTest Professional (QTP) is a very sophisticated testing tool for carrying out functional/regression testing of a variety of applications and very easy to learn and use. Learning QTP becomes easy if you already know WinRunner. QTP is much more powerful and one can migrate to it very easily.
It is used to generate various test cases and run them automatically. Its important features are :
- It has the record/replay provision to record the user interactions with the application software. You can record your keyboard entries and mouse clicks of the application GUI. QTP automatically generates the test script. Test script can be run repeatedly for regression testing of your application.
- This testing tool has a recovery manager and in case the application halts due to an error, it will automatically recover and this is very useful for unattended testing.
- QTP provides checkpoints option.
- It uses VB script as the scripting language and its syntax is very similar to Visual Basic, hence learning this scripting language is very easy.
- It provides a facility for synchronization of test cases.
- Its auto-documentation feature provides the feature for creating test documentation.
- Test report data is stored in documented XML format. This facilitates transferring the report data to another third party tool or into HTML web page.
- It supports Unicode and hence you can test applications written for any of the world languages.
- USing special add-in modules, QTP can be used for testing a variety of applications such as :

ERP/CRM packages such as SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Oracle.
.NET WebForms, WinForms, .Net Controls.
.Web service applications and protocols including XML, SOAP, WSDL, J2EE and .NET.
Multimedia applications such as RealAudio/Video and Flash.