Hello people

Just joined this community as it was most relevant to the information I am seeking. I am a web project manager working for a publishing company. I am looking into getting myself certified in Business Analysis. Ideally I want to have a certificate that is recognized worldwide. In other words, I would like to find out what the equaivalent of PRINCE2 and PMI for project management for Business analysis.

The research done so far suggests that ISEB is recognized and so is IIBA. Am I right in assuming that these organizations are widely known in the BA world?

Furthermore, I am looking into certifications for TESTING and again, I saw ISEB and BCS.

Would apreciate some feedback.

Cheers

On the Business Analyst certification, I agree with Kevin.  The CBAP certification from the IIBA is the way to go for international recognition.  While the CBAP is still a new certification, is vendor neutral, is gaining recognition, and is definitely the certification to have as a business analyst.

I'm not too familiar with the QA certification but I would recommend that you get a vendor-neutral certification (unless of course you want to be certified in a given QA tool such as Mercury, Seque, etc.)

Here are some links which might help you with the QA certification (I can't vouch for any of them):

• Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA)
• Quality Improvement Associate Certification (CQIA)
• Certified Test Manager (CTM)

- Adrian

alitech wrote Am i right to assume that QA is an alternative term for software testing or is there a difference?

I'm sure that for those closer to the Quality Assurance/Testing discipline and for some of the purists out there are differences between Quality Assurance and Software Testing however, in practice, the term QA & Testing are used interchangeably.

From a pure definition perspective the biggest difference is that software testing tends to refer strictly to the activities involved in using the system after it has been developed that is test the actual product. Quality Assurance is not restricted to the testing of the actual product. QA implies a process for ensuring quality in the entire development process including requirements, functional specifications, and then the actual code/product. The idea is that quality assurance needs to start with the requirements - do we have good requirements since if the requirements are bad there is no value in testing the actual product down the line.

In reality, very few testing teams are involved in performing Quality Assurance on requirements and functional specifications. Most QA teams focus on the testing the actual product.

- Adrian