- CT-ATLaS (Agile Test Leadership at Scale) is the ISTQB certification for leading quality and testing across many agile teams at once, at the organizational level rather than within a single project.
- Current version: syllabus v2.0 (September 2023), complemented by a v2.0 Body of Knowledge. ISTQB positions it as an Advanced Level certification in the agile stream.
- Exam prerequisite: CTFL 4.0, or a pre-4.0 CTFL plus CTFL Agile Tester. At least 3 years of experience in agile teams or organizations is recommended.
- Exam: 40 multiple-choice questions, 71 points, pass mark 47 points (65%), 120 minutes (+25% if you don't take it in your native language).
- The syllabus has 5 chapters and requires at least 11.5 hours of accredited training: quality assistance, value stream mapping, continuous improvement, organizational test strategy and test processes at scale.
- It's aimed at test managers, heads of QA, quality coaches, Scrum Masters, RTEs and leaders who coordinate several teams.
- The exam is not included in any course: buy it from iSQI (Cool Testers students get a 20% coupon) or through us if you need an invoice.
If you already lead testing in an organization that uses Scrum, SAFe, LeSS or any other scaling framework, you have probably hit the same wall: every team tests "its own part", but nobody owns the quality of the whole solution. ISTQB CT-ATLaS exists precisely for that. This guide explains what it covers, who should take it, what the exam looks like and how to prepare, based on the official v2.0 syllabus.
If you're still getting the big picture of the certification scheme, start with our main ISTQB certification guide (costs in your currency, exams and the full portfolio) and come back here.
What CT-ATLaS is and where it sits in the ISTQB portfolio
CT-ATLaS stands for Certified Tester Agile Test Leadership at Scale. According to the syllabus, it focuses on organizing and improving quality and testing across multiple teams in an agile organization, and on approaching quality strategically to achieve greater business agility.
The core idea is a change of role: from test management that controls to leadership that serves. The syllabus captures this with the concept of quality assistance: instead of leaving responsibility for quality with testers, the test leader helps the whole organization own it.
Current version
The current version is v2.0, released on September 29, 2023. v1.0 (May 2022) had only three chapters; v2.0 added chapters 4 (organizational test strategy) and 5 (test processes) and updated the first three. That's why there is also an Upgrade exam for v1.0 holders.
One important detail: the exam is based on both the syllabus and the ATLaS Body of Knowledge (BoK). The syllabus sets the learning objectives; the BoK develops the content in more depth. You need both.
Where it fits
CT-ATLaS builds on ISTQB Foundation Level (CTFL 4.0) and on the knowledge covered by Agile Tester (CTFL-AT). ISTQB explains that it complements two Advanced Level certifications:
- Test Management (CTAL-TM), which focuses on projects (traditional and hybrid approaches), not on the organization.
- Agile Technical Tester (CTAL-ATT), which focuses on technical practices.
Put simply: CTAL-TM teaches you to manage testing on a project; CT-ATLaS teaches you to lead quality across an entire agile organization.
Who it's for and prerequisites
The syllabus targets people working in organizations pursuing agility at scale or business agility who already understand agile development and agile testing. It lists roles such as:
- Test manager, head of testing, quality coach, agile test leader and agile test team leader.
- Test analyst, technical test analyst, test automation engineer, quality engineer and QA.
- Members of agile teams and of leadership teams that lead multiple agile teams.
- IT director, project manager, release train engineer (RTE), Scrum Master, product owner and management consultants.
Exam entry requirements
The official entry criterion is one of the following:
- The ISTQB Foundation Level v4.0 certificate, or
- A Foundation Level certificate older than v4.0 plus the ISTQB Agile Tester Foundation Level certificate.
The syllabus notes that once Agile Tester is no longer available, CTFL 4.0 will be the only entry criterion. ISTQB also strongly recommends:
- At least three years of experience working in an agile team or organization.
- Familiarity with at least one agile scaling framework (the syllabus references SAFe and LeSS, for example).
- Taking a course accredited by an ISTQB Member Board.
What you'll be able to do: business outcomes
The syllabus defines three Business Outcomes (BOs). An "ATLaS Certified Test Leader" can:
| Outcome | What it means in practice | Example measurable key result (from the syllabus) |
|---|---|---|
| BO1. Foster a value-driven quality mindset and culture | Build and sustain a quality culture, or help a traditional organization transition to a value-driven culture. | Provide quality assistance to x colleagues with no testing background. |
| BO2. Co-create and implement an organizational test strategy | Design, together with the teams, how the organization develops its quality and testing capabilities. | Reduce production failures or customer complaints by x%; increase improvement experiments. |
| BO3. Continuously improve test processes at the organizational level | Address the testing challenges specific to agile-at-scale product development. | Reduce lead time to develop and evaluate an MVP or MMF; increase the number of test types done within the iteration. |
Notice that the examples aren't "being able to define terms" but business results. That's what sets this certification apart from Foundation-level ones.
Syllabus content chapter by chapter
The v2.0 syllabus has five examinable chapters. Accredited courses must provide at least 11.5 hours of instruction over at least two days, distributed as follows:
| Chapter | Minimum time | Key topics |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Quality Assistance | 60 min | Quality assistance vs. QA, QC and test management; skills: change leadership, quality coaching, facilitation and training |
| 2. Improve Quality and Flow in a Value-Driven Organization | 120 min | Value streams, value stream mapping (VSM), flow metrics, the 8 types of lean waste |
| 3. Continuous Improvement of Quality and Testing | 150 min | PDCA cycle, embedding it in the organization, systems thinking, root cause analysis, causal loop diagrams |
| 4. Organizational Test Strategy in a Value-Driven Organization | 165 min | DevOps practices, creating and implementing the strategy, maturity assessments, fitting test leadership into a scaling framework |
| 5. Test Processes in a Value-Driven Organization | 195 min | Testing challenges at scale, cross-team coordination, test and flow metrics, structuring challenging activities, team types |
Learning objectives range from K2 (understand) to K4 (analyze). There are also hands-on objectives that aren't tested in the multiple-choice exam but must be covered by an accredited course.
Chapter 1. Quality Assistance (60 min)
This chapter defines the concept the whole certification rests on. According to the syllabus, quality assistance differs from the traditional approach because it:
- Optimizes for flow and value delivery.
- Focuses on prevention, automation and observability.
- Encourages built-in quality continuously, with shift left and shift right.
- Empowers teams to take responsibility for quality and testing.
- Embeds testing across the organization instead of keeping testing silos.
- Requires leaders who serve rather than managers who control.
Note: the syllabus makes clear that test management is still needed; what changes is how it's practiced.
The second part covers four skills: change leadership, quality coaching, facilitation and training. A practical example: a team complains that regression "always breaks". Instead of assigning an extra tester, the leader facilitates a session where the team itself decides which tests to automate first, coaches the developer who will write them and proposes a short training on test design techniques. The team ends up with more capability of its own, not more dependency.
Chapter 2. Quality and flow: value stream mapping (120 min)
A value stream is the set of steps, people, systems and information needed to deliver value. The syllabus distinguishes operational value streams (order to delivery) from development value streams (concept to launch).
You'll learn to facilitate value stream mapping (K3) and to analyze a value stream (K4) using basic metrics:
- Lead time (LT), wait time and processing time (PT).
- Flow efficiency (also called process cycle efficiency).
- Percent complete and accurate (%C&A).
- Phase Containment Efficiency (PCE).
With that data you identify the 8 types of lean waste: transport, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over-processing, correction and non-utilized talent.
Practical example: you map a user story's flow and find that development takes 2 days, but the story waits 6 days for a test environment. Flow efficiency is low and the waste is "waiting". On top of that, %C&A at the testing step is low because stories arrive without clear acceptance criteria, which creates "correction". Now you know where to act first, and it isn't by hiring more testers.
Chapter 3. Continuous improvement of quality and testing (150 min)
This chapter treats improvement as experiments and learning cycles, in two blocks:
Structured problem solving with PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). You learn to apply Deming's cycle to a quality problem (K3), usually starting from a gap analysis between current-state and future-state value stream maps. You also learn to embed it: multi-team retrospectives, product- and organization-level improvement boards and, as the syllabus stresses, a safe environment where people can reveal mistakes.
Systems thinking and root causes. When several teams share a solution, "fixing" a problem in one team can create another next door. The syllabus lists typical bottlenecks in development value streams: environment creation, code deployment, system testing and software architecture. You'll see the "Five Whys" and, above all, causal loop diagrams (CLDs), which you must be able to apply (K3). A CLD has variables, causal links, +/− signs and loop markers, and is built as a group in six steps: define variables, define causal relationships, describe the effect, add other factors (delays, goals), identify reinforcing and balancing loops, and identify interventions.
Example: "more deadline pressure" → "fewer automated tests" → "more escaped defects" → "more rework" → "more deadline pressure". That's a reinforcing loop. Seeing it drawn helps management understand why cutting testing doesn't speed anything up.
Chapter 4. Organizational test strategy (165 min, up to K4)
When an organization becomes value-driven, its organizational test strategy must be revisited, both in content and in how it is defined and maintained. The chapter covers:
- DevOps practices to include in the strategy, organized around the six-stage infinite loop (operate, monitor, explore, code, integrate, release): feature toggles, testing in production, canary releases, hypothesis-driven development for MVPs, self-service environments, blue/green deployments and chaos engineering.
- Creating and implementing the strategy. The syllabus suggests it be lightweight, user-friendly and "living", like a definition of done; developed within a community of practice (CoP); tailored down or up; and validated through experiments so it doesn't become shelf-ware. For leading individual change it mentions the ADKAR model.
- Validating alignment of testing with business and technical needs using maturity models (DevOps, team agility, organizational agility), preferring facilitated self-assessments over top-down assessments and measuring business outcomes, delivery outputs and people/process maturity.
- Fitting test leadership at the organizational, product and operational levels, and the transition from traditional test manager to agile test leader: new responsibilities, responsibilities to keep and anti-patterns such as "command and control".
Example: instead of a 60-page document, the organizational strategy defines five minimum elements every definition of done must include (for instance, automated tests in the pipeline and performance criteria for critical stories). Each train or team of teams can add its own (tailoring up).
Chapter 5. Test processes at scale (195 min, up to K4)
The longest chapter and the one that weighs most in the exam. It covers the typical challenges when agile development scales:
- Teams can't test the full solution on their own, and cross-team testing ends up with no owner.
- Coordinating agile, non-agile and third-party teams. Suggested practices: one backlog with cross-team refinement, big room planning (PI planning), Scrum of Scrums, demos of integrated increments, inspect & adapt, impediment and risk boards, and debt handling.
- Test and flow metrics in three dimensions: business outcomes; delivery and performance (the four key metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate and time to restore service); and people/process maturity. Plus the difference between leading and lagging indicators.
- Structuring challenging activities: functional integration testing, technical integration testing (e.g., microservices) and non-functional testing (performance, reliability, security, accessibility); synchronizing deployments across teams; managing risk with a shared board; and setting working agreements with vendors.
- Which tests each team type performs: stream-aligned (feature and hypothesis testing), platform (shared test tools and infrastructure), complicated-subsystem (specialized testing) and enabling (temporary support and research into new methods).
Example: performance testing always gets pushed "to the release". A K4 analysis might lead you to set up an enabling team that teaches stream-aligned teams to run small load tests inside the sprint, while a platform team maintains shared load infrastructure. For the technical side of this, see our guide to ISTQB Performance Testing (CT-PT).
Download the official syllabus
The official syllabus is in English. Download it and read it together with the Body of Knowledge, available on the ISTQB page:
The CT-ATLaS exam
Verified structure
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Questions | 40, multiple choice |
| Total points | 71 (K3 and K4 questions are worth more than one point) |
| Pass mark | 47 points (65%) |
| Duration | 120 minutes; 150 minutes if the exam isn't in your native language (+25%) |
| Exam basis | Syllabus v2.0 + Body of Knowledge v2.0 |
| Upgrade from v1.0 | 23 questions, 44 points, 29 to pass, 75 minutes |
Source: ISTQB Exam Structure and Rules Tables v1.18 (May 2026) and the official CT-ATLaS page. According to that table, chapters 4 and 5 account for 23 of the 40 questions and 44 of the 71 points, so those are the ones to master.
Exam formats
- Online with remote proctoring (iSQI FLEX): available 24/7. For Advanced Level exams, book at least 48 hours ahead. You need a webcam, a microphone, a second camera (your phone) and a government-issued ID.
- Pearson VUE: at a test center or online with OnVUE.
- On-site at your company: for groups of 6 or more, Cool Testers brings a proctor.
Paper-based exams are no longer offered. As for language: at the time of writing, iSQI offers CT-ATLaS in English, so non-native speakers will likely get 25% extra time. The certification has the same value in any language; some companies working on US projects may value an English exam, but that's the employer's call, not a difference in the certification.
Where to buy it
- Directly at iSQI.org, our partner and official exam provider. Cool Testers students get a 20% coupon off the price on their site for the first attempt. This is the recommended option if you're paying yourself.
- Through Cool Testers (certification exam, 1 or 2 attempts): best if your company pays or you need an invoice. You have 1 year to take it. Contact us first to confirm availability for this exam.
Costs in your currency are in our main ISTQB certification guide.
How to prepare for CT-ATLaS
- Confirm your prerequisite. Have your CTFL 4.0 certificate (or older CTFL + Agile Tester) ready. If you're missing it, start with the Foundation Level 4.0 course.
- Read the syllabus and the Body of Knowledge side by side. The syllabus tells you what is examined; the BoK provides the detail the questions are written from.
- Practice K3 and K4 objectives on real cases. Map your own value stream, calculate flow efficiency and draw a causal loop diagram for a recurring problem. It's the best way to understand analysis questions.
- Review a scaling framework. The syllabus references SAFe and LeSS. You don't need to be an expert, but you should understand PI planning, trains, team types and multi-team retrospectives.
- Prioritize chapters 4 and 5. They have the most study time and the most points.
- Take the official sample exam from the ISTQB page and work out why each wrong option is wrong.
- Brush up on key vocabulary: value stream, waste, flow efficiency, causal loop, stream-aligned team, leading indicator.
Benefits and career paths
- It sets you apart as an agile quality leader. Many test managers hold CTAL-TM; few can show they know how to lead quality across a SAFe train or multiple squads.
- It gives you a common language with leadership. Lean, value streams, DORA metrics and business outcomes are what directors and agile coaches speak.
- It opens broader roles: head of QA, quality coach, agile test leader, QA manager for multiple teams, agile transformation consultant with a quality focus.
- It helps you justify investments. Chapter 4 prepares you to build business cases and success metrics for quality initiatives that go beyond a single team.
We don't quote salary figures because they vary enormously by country, company and seniority; what is consistent is that these roles require proven experience on top of the certification.
Related certifications and next steps
| Certification | Relationship to CT-ATLaS |
|---|---|
| CTFL 4.0 | Entry requirement |
| CTFL-AT Agile Tester | Required together with a pre-4.0 CTFL |
| CTAL-TM Test Management | Complementary: project-level management |
| CTAL-ATT | Complementary: agile technical practices |
| CT-QDO Quality in DevOps | Goes deeper into quality within DevOps |
| CT-TAS and CTAL-TAE | Automation strategy and engineering, suggested by ISTQB as next steps |
| Expert ITP and TMMi | Test process improvement with formal models; the syllabus refers to ITP for more depth |
ISTQB also suggests Test Analyst, AI Testing and Model-Based Testing as further interests.
Frequently asked questions
Is CT-ATLaS an Advanced Level certification?
ISTQB describes it as an Advanced Level certification focused on agile approaches at the organizational level. It requires CTFL 4.0 (or an older CTFL plus Agile Tester) and recommends three years of agile experience.
How many questions does the CT-ATLaS exam have and how long is it?
40 multiple-choice questions worth 71 points. You pass with 47 points (65%). It lasts 120 minutes, or 150 if you don't take it in your native language.
Do I need Agile Tester to take CT-ATLaS?
Only if your Foundation Level certificate is older than version 4.0. If you hold CTFL 4.0, that certificate alone meets the entry requirement.
What should I study for the exam: the syllabus or the Body of Knowledge?
Both. The exam is based on the v2.0 syllabus and the v2.0 ATLaS Body of Knowledge, both available on the official ISTQB page.
Can I take the exam in Spanish?
At the time of writing, iSQI offers CT-ATLaS in English. If English isn't your native language, you get 25% extra time. The certification has the same value in any language.
What's the difference between CT-ATLaS and Test Management (CTAL-TM)?
CTAL-TM focuses on managing testing for projects, using traditional and hybrid approaches. CT-ATLaS focuses on leading quality and testing across an agile organization with many teams: value streams, continuous improvement, organizational strategy and team types.
Is the exam included in any Cool Testers course?
No. The exam is purchased separately: directly from iSQI with a 20% coupon for our students, or through Cool Testers if you need an invoice or your company is paying.