My notions on testing were largely influenced by my high-school physics teacher. He handed out the exams to everybody a couple weeks before the test. People were shocked. "Don't worry," he said, "it won't make any difference." And indeed, that was true. 1/7
The people who would otherwise have gotten A's, go A's. And the F students failed. His point was that it was unfair for us not to know what he expected us to know, and if we knew enough to be able to do the exam, he was happy. 2/7
You can't learn physics in two weeks, so the screwups, even if they were motivated, couldn't fully catch up. They didn't bother, though. 3/7
I think that reasoning should also apply to Agile certification testing. If you know the questions and pass the exam, then you've demonstrated that you know the topics that the exam tests. What's the problem with that? 4/7
The only possible reason for not giving out the questions in advance would be that you're not testing all the topics that you expect people to know, and that's not a good statement about the quality of the test. 5/7
Otherwise, knowing the questions means that you can focus your study. What's wrong with that? 6/7
If you think that can't work, the FAA pilot's tests all work this way. 100% of the questions are available in advance. The test is a subset of those. The questions are comprehensive. The grades follow the expected bell curve. Works great. 7/7
