CAT case studies
CAT · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The ISTQB® Certified Tester – Agile Tester (CTFL-AT) is an ISTQB Foundation-level add-on certification delivered through iSQI, one of the certification bodies that administers ISTQB exams. It sits in the ISTQB agile certification stream alongside the Advanced Level Agile Technical Tester and Agile Test Leadership at Scale, and it builds on the Foundation Level qualification rather than replacing it. The CAT case studies are 5 cases and about 3,361 words.
1Falcon: the hardening sprint that never goes away
Team Falcon builds payment-authorisation services in two-week Scrum sprints. Sprint reviews are skipped because, the team says, the demo environment is unstable.
642 words, about 3 min2Meridian: a definition of done that stops at code merge
At insurer Meridian a ten-person Scrum team defines done as code merged and unit tests pass. A sprint is ten working days; the two testers typically receive their first build on day 7 and have about 2.5 days for system testing before the review.
658 words, about 3 min3Kestrel: 1,200 UI tests and a cancelled exploratory session
Retail team Kestrel (six developers, two testers, two-week sprints, release candidate every Friday) runs 1,200 Selenium end-to-end tests in one browser suite. A full run takes 9 hours; 31% of runs fail for reasons unrelated to the change (timing, shared test data), and re-running only the failures takes another 90 minutes.
688 words, about 3 min4Harbour: one tester, five developers and a signature
At logistics firm Harbour one tester supports five developers. She writes all test cases, executes all system tests, triages every defect, maintains the regression suite and signs a release-readiness sheet that the release manager will not accept without her signature.
657 words, about 3 min5Alpine: audit evidence without a documentation sprint
Alpine builds infusion-pump control software under IEC 62304 and ISO 13485 and has just moved to two-week sprints. An external auditor asked for evidence that every software requirement has been verified and that results are traceable to the specific build released.
716 words, about 4 min