Practitioner in Agile Quality (PAQ)
PAQ 2.0 - Overview
"A4Q Practitioner in Agile Quality 2.0 - Get Quality Focussed!”
Agile software development allows organizations to respond to changing market dynamics quickly and get to market faster. Using agile approaches to deliver quality at speed can result in products that delight customers and create real business value.
The A4Q Practitioner in Agile Quality (PAQ) immerses participants in agile practices with an emphasis on quality. A Practitioner in Agile Quality can use agile as an effective pathway to accelerate the delivery of quality software.
Target Group:
A4Q PAQ is for any practitioner in agile who wants to gain recognition with a recognized certification in agile quality.
The A4Q PAQ certification is for anyone, and everyone, in the team who needs to continuously deliver better products, services and user experiences using agile including:
- Members of Agile, Scrum or DevOps teams (Product Owners, Scrum Masters) wanting to build better quality products
- Development members (Testers, Developers, Business Analysts) wanting to understand and apply agile quality approaches
- Managers seeking to drive quality and efficiency in agile delivery
The Certification
Course content includes:
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Product Backlog
- Business Value & Priority
- Refinement
- Acceptance Criteria, Definition of Ready and Done
- Test Strategy
- Quality Strategy
- Risk Assessment
- Estimation & Velocity
- Anti-Patterns / Patterns
- Code Quality
- Refactoring
- Automation
- CI/CD Pipeline
- TDD/BDD
- Exploratory Testing
- MVP and MMF
- Acceptance Criteria versus Fit for Purpose
- Retrospectives
- People, Process, Product Evaluation
- (Continuous) Improvement Culture
- Follow up on Results
- Team & Collaboration
- Retrospectives
- Overviews - DevOps, Scaling Agile, End to End (E2E in agile)
Practical Certification Exam
The A4Q PAQ exam is in the form of a Competency Assessment that verifies the practical application of Agile principles.
The assessment takes place at the end of the course, or it can be separately scheduled to be taken via remote proctor.
The assessment is ‘hands-on’ on where candidates are given a product backlog release which includes user stories, associated design documentation plus a ‘multi-drop’ application seeded with defects. Candidates will be given instructions as to what is expected of them during the practical assessment and the opportunity to create the work products required.
Prerequisites:
This is a practitioner’s course. Candidates are expected to have met one of the agile knowledge prerequisites which can be demonstrated by holding certifications such as ISTQB® Foundation Level Agile Tester OR have two years professional experience working in Agile.
Due to the practical experiential learning approach to this course, there is assumed knowledge which, if not met, will make it difficult for candidates to complete the course and assessments within the timeboxed course.
Candidates are expected to be able to already apply basic practices and techniques, such as:
- Agile Manifesto principles and Scrum events
- Basic test terminology
- Knowledge of the basic SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
Prerequisites:
How does this certification benefit me?
After taking the course and passing the assessment, you will have demonstrated you align with the PAQ Competency Framework:
- Agile Quality Mindset - Put into practice all the soft skills appropriate to the Agile Quality Mind Set
- Faster Delivery - Optimize delivery through implementing automation practices where feasible
- Build Quality In, Quality Engineering Principles - Implement the team activities to ensure the product quality objectives for each persona are met from inception (shift left) throughout the product lifecycle. Build the right product, right first time, maximizing business value using repeatable, auditable and adaptable approaches
- Scalability - Identify additional quality risks and changes required to effectively scale processes based on team size and/or distribution.
A4Q PAQ is a practical focussed, accelerated learning course – developing and attesting to hands-on skills (including exploratory testing exercises using the “Ticketz” application).
The A4Q PAQ training course extends existing agile, testing and software quality management theory inspiring and building confidence through exercises and experiential learning aligned to the PAQ Competency Framework.
Why is the dolphin used to represent A4Q PAQ?
Dolphins communicate, collaborate, synchronize, learn together and adapt, whilst having fun!
They are agile! An A4Q Practitioner in Agile Quality (PAQ) ensures quality products and delivery
of real business value by being visible, seeking and reacting to customer feedback early and often.