Course overview
The ISTQB Certified Tester Acceptance Testing course equips testers, business analysts, and QA professionals with the skills to collaborate effectively and validate that software meets business requirements.
Focusing on types such as user acceptance testing (UAT), contractual and regulatory testing, and alpha/beta testing not typical test design techniques you’ll understand how to define acceptance criteria, align testing with business needs, and deliver high-quality outcomes.
Accredited by UKITB on behalf of ISTQB and mapped to SFIAplus level 3 by the BCS.
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Course highlights
- Duration: 2 days of intensive training (9am – 5pm)
- Format: live virtual tutor-led sessions
- Content: covers acceptance testing foundations, business collaboration, acceptance criteria creation, experience-based testing, and non-functional requirements like usability and performance
- Exam included: full CT‑AcT exam administered during the course
- Accreditation: officially accredited UKITB/ISTQB course
- Prerequisite: ISTQB Foundation Certificate required
Why you should attend
- Become proficient in designing and executing effective acceptance tests to ensure software aligns with stakeholder requirements
- Learn to collaborate closely with product owners, business analysts, and testers to establish and validate acceptance criteria
- Enhance your ability to deliver quality through practical techniques like exploratory testing and business-process modelling
- Earn a globally recognised ISTQB Certified Tester Acceptance Testing certification that boosts your professional credibility
- Gain a competitive edge in roles that require cross-functional collaboration in testing and product delivery
Who should attend
- Testers, test analysts, and QA professionals holding the ISTQB Foundation qualification
- Business analysts, user acceptance testers, and product owners involved in requirements and testing alignment
- Professionals responsible for contractual, regulatory, or stakeholder acceptance testing
- Anyone seeking to qualify as an ISTQB Certified Tester Acceptance Testing certified professional
About ISTQB and the ‘certified tester’ scheme
Founded in 2002, ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) is a not-for-profit association comprising 66 national boards (including the UKITB) to provide worldwide coverage
ISTQB has defined the Advanced certification as part of their ‘Certified Tester’ scheme that, with over 240,000 certifications, has become the de facto world-wide standard for software testing qualifications.
The ‘Certified Tester’ scheme:
- Provides a set of professional qualifications widely-recognised by employers, customers and peers;
- Enables software suppliers to hire and train certified testers and thereby gain commercial advantage over their competitors by advertising their tester recruitment and development policies; and
- Enables comparison of testing skills across different countries, testers to move across country borders more easily, and multi-national/international projects to have a common understanding of testing issues.
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Entry requirements
The entry requirements for the Certified Tester Foundation Acceptance Tester Level qualification are that the candidate should hold an ISTQB Foundation certificate.
On arrival at the course candidates should have read the provided Syllabus in preparation for the course. The course is intensive and those delegates who have prepared achieve a higher exam success rate.
Exam
To qualify as an internationally recognized Certified Foundation Acceptance Tester delegates must successfully pass the exam:
- The examination consists of a one-hour exam with 40 multiple choice questions.
- It will be a ‘closed book’ examination i.e., no notes or books will be allowed into the examination room.
- Duration of 60 minutes (or 75 minutes for candidates taking examinations that are not in their native language)
- The pass mark is 65% (26 out of 40).
- Exam is included in the price
Next steps
Holders of the Certified Tester Foundation Acceptance Tester qualification are eligible to continue on to higher level software testing qualifications, such as:
- BCS Intermediate Certificate in Software Testing, although this is not a pre-requisite for the Advanced courses
- ISTQB Advanced Level qualifications, which comprise Test Manager, Test Analyst, Agile Technical Tester, Test Analyst, Technical Test Analyst Engineer and Security Tester
Learning objectives
Foundation Level Acceptance Testing candidates who have passed the Foundation Level “Acceptance Testing” syllabus exam should be able to accomplish the following Objectives:
For business analysts and product owners:
- Contribute to an organization’s acceptance testing activities by participating in the acceptance test design phase and supporting the alignment of the product with the business requirements.
- Contribute to an organization’s acceptance testing activities by participating in the acceptance test design phase and supporting the alignment of the product with the business requirements.
- Contribute to the quality of the acceptance testing process, including validation and verification of produced artifacts.
For testers:
- Contribute to the definition of acceptance criteria during the requirements definition phase.
- Collaborate efficiently with business analysts and other stakeholders during all acceptance testing activities.
- Understand the business objectives, communicate with business units, and share common objectives for acceptance testing.
IT professionals who have passed the “Acceptance Testing” syllabus exam should be able to demonstrate their skills in the following areas:
- Develop and review acceptance criteria for requirements and/or user stories in a collaborative way.
- Apply Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior Driven Development (BDD) techniques for a given scenario.
- Apply the Gherkin language for designing acceptance tests for a given scenario.
- Organize exploratory testing and beta testing session.
- Review business process/rule models specified in BPMN and DMN.
- Use business process/rule models specified in BPMN and DMN to create acceptance tests.
- Consider usability/user experience, performance efficiency and security in planning and performing acceptance testing.
- Collaborate efficiently with relevant stakeholders in acceptance testing activities including defect reporting and analysis and test status reporting.
- Select relevant tools for acceptance testing activities.
Syllabus – key points
Pictorially, the syllabus concentrates on the key aspects of Testing that are important to be understood and practiced by the specialist acceptance tester.
Sean Willis | QA Tester | Guestline Ltd –
Very well presented and good explanations throughout. A good pace and constant feedback during, great sessions.
Darpan Mahendra Rathod | Software QA Technician | Barnett Waddingham LLP –
Appreciated John’s patience in leading me through this course on a 1-2-1 basis.
John also gave me insight on how I can implement the course content in my own workplace as well as how the syllabus relates to the exam questions.
John also gave me tips in preparation for the associated exam.
YAT WAN | Test Lead | Royal Mail Group –
Interesting course. John have explained the concepts, exercises and questions well. Any mistakes made from practice questions were explained until it made sense.
Constant sense check with the group was nice when explaining the theory.
Some improvements can be to offer 1 hour lunch break, sometimes going through the theory slides pace was quick for my liking.
Scott Davenport | QA Tester | Guestline –
Interesting, concise & friendly tutor. Learnt a lot over the short space of two days, and felt easy to follow and understand.
Julia Whelan | Business Analyst | AQA –
Already experience of user stories and some on testing. The second day was less familiar to me so gained more there. Balance of tutoring and practice was okay and factoring in a number of breaks helped delivery online. Certainly worth doing if you have some BA /testing experience, or if it needs refreshing.
Rachael Shepherd | Administrator | Scottish Government –
Course content & delivery_x000D_
I found the pacing and delivery of the trainer across the two day course was excellent. As someone with no UAT background I found the course content was appropriately tailored and suitable for the intended audience. _x000D_
Personally, I found the example of ordering products on Amazon difficult to relate to because I do not use Amazon. Whilst I appreciate that I am in a minority of the population as a non-user of Amazon, it might be something to bear in mind for future courses._x000D_
I was unable to complete the UAT Test Plan exercise on Day 2 of the course. I believe Mr Weymouth did explain that this exercise would ordinarily take about an hour to complete and unfortunately we had less than an hour allocated to the task. I am fortunate in having access to two monitors but even so I found moving between my Word document notes, the slides and the delegates resource pack document quite tricky in the time provided. It was however the first time I have undertaken a professional interactive training course in the virtual environment where there is an expectation to move between resources and grapple with a new subject under time constraints so I imagine my skills in this would improve with more practice. _x000D_
The virtual classroom environment/ technical aspects_x000D_
It was the first time I have used the GoToMeeting environment. I am familiar with MS Teams and I did miss the ability to raise a hand which is available when using Teams. Perhaps there was an option to do this and I was just unfamiliar with the functionality in GoToMeeting. Having said this I do feel that the trainer put delegates at their ease to speak and/or type comments in the chat to participate. I found that I unmuted on a couple of occasions and spoke but appeared not to have been heard as another delegate started speaking and took up the discussion. I was on the point of commenting in the chat field that I did not think my microphone was actually working but was successful at my next attempt to speak. _x000D_
I understand that the trainer had not delivered this course in the virtual environment before and I thought he managed extremely well overall. There were a couple of instances where I thought it would have been helpful to have a recap slide in place when the delegates were tasked to go off and complete a set exercise however the trainer was resourceful and did make good use of the chat field throughout the days to summarise exercises, break timings etc. _x000D_
Summary_x000D_
I believe I have taken a sound overview of the basic principles and key points about UAT from this course. I started reading The Chartered Institute for IT’s step by step guide to user acceptance testing publication by Brian Hambling and Pauline van Goethem prior to attending the course and now feel that I would like to reread the chapters I have covered so far and then continue this reading in order to further my knowledge and consolidate the training course. I have gained a better understanding of the critical importance of UAT in successful business as a result of attending this course.
Anne Williamson | Business Systems Analyst | Crofting Commission –
Paul made this a very interesting course. He was easy to listen to and very knowledgeable about the subject. Some of the exercises would have worked better in a classroom environment but we still got a a good understanding of the subject.
MATTHEW HOPKINS | INTEGRATION ENGINEER | TLMNEXUS LTD –
Confirmed a lot of current practice and gave plenty of food for thought for improvements. Liked the adaptable approach to suit our current appointments. Also appreciated the opportunity to discuss things as we went along.
Dick Delaney | Integration engineer | tlmNexus –
found the course really useful, appreciate the way it was contextualized to our experience. A lot of good information that we as a company need to mull over to improve the way we approach UAT.
Dana Naidoo | QA Manager | Makosi Consulting –
Very informative. Loved how interactive it was.
Stuart Smith | Integration Engineer | tlmNexus –
John was very good and took the time to adapt the content to the needs of our roles and and of our organisation – so thank you John.
Neil Harding | Integration Engineer Manager | tlmNexus Ltd –
A really useful course for me as I had not received any formal testing-related training since I joined our company 9 years ago. John explained the concepts, theories and models of UAT extremely well and it has certainly given me food for thought on how we can apply a more structured approach to our company UAT regime. John also adapted the course as we progressed to add relevance our company processes and he also covered alternative approaches – all of which was much appreciated. The course material was most useful and the GoToMeeting software was very user friendly. I believe the pace and content of the course was just right and method of delivery was very professional and done in a relaxed, consultative manner. A very informative and useful course. Thank you John!
joaquim.fragoso –
Well sctructured, clean and pleasant look&feel
joaquim.fragoso –
Well sctructured, clean and pleasant look&feel