Software testing Interview Questions

What is Acceptance Testing?
Testing conducted to enable a user/customer to determine whether to accept a software product. Normally performed to validate the software meets a set of agreed acceptance criteria.

What is Accessibility Testing?
Verifying a product is accessible to the people having disabilities (deaf, blind, mentally disabled etc.).

What is Ad Hoc Testing?
A testing phase where the tester tries to 'break' the system by randomly trying the system's functionality. Can include negative testing as well. See also Monkey Testing.

What is Agile Testing?
Testing practice for projects using agile methodologies, treating development as the customer of testing and emphasizing a test-first design paradigm. See also Test Driven Development.

What is Application Binary Interface (ABI)?
A specification defining requirements for portability of applications in binary forms across defferent system platforms and environments.

What is Application Programming Interface (API)?
A formalized set of software calls and routines that can be referenced by an application program in order to access supporting system or network services.

What is Automated Software Quality (ASQ)?
The use of software tools, such as automated testing tools, to improve software quality.

What is Automated Testing?
Testing employing software tools which execute tests without manual intervention. Can be applied in GUI, performance, API, etc. testing.
The use of software to control the execution of tests, the comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes, the setting up of test preconditions, and other test control and test reporting functions.
What is Backus-Naur Form?
A metalanguage used to formally describe the syntax of a language.

What is Basic Block?
A sequence of one or more consecutive, executable statements containing no branches.

What is Basis Path Testing?
A white box test case design technique that uses the algorithmic flow of the program to design tests.

What is Basis Set?
The set of tests derived using basis path testing.

What is Baseline?
The point at which some deliverable produced during the software engineering process is put under formal change control.
What you will do during the first day of job?
What would you like to do five years from now?

Tell me about the worst boss you've ever had.

What are your greatest weaknesses?

What are your strengths?

What is a successful product?

What do you like about Windows?

What is good code?

What are basic, core, practices for a QA specialist?

What do you like about QA?

What has not worked well in your previous QA experience and what would you change?

How you will begin to improve the QA process?

What is the difference between QA and QC?

What is UML and how to use it for testing?
What is Beta Testing?
Testing of a rerelease of a software product conducted by customers.

What is Binary Portability Testing?
Testing an executable application for portability across system platforms and environments, usually for conformation to an ABI specification.

What is Black Box Testing?
Testing based on an analysis of the specification of a piece of software without reference to its internal workings. The goal is to test how well the component conforms to the published requirements for the component.

What is Bottom Up Testing?
An approach to integration testing where the lowest level components are tested first, then used to facilitate the testing of higher level components. The process is repeated until the component at the top of the hierarchy is tested.

What is Boundary Testing?
Test which focus on the boundary or limit conditions of the software being tested. (Some of these tests are stress tests).
What is Bug?
A fault in a program which causes the program to perform in an unintended or unanticipated manner.

What is Boundary Value Analysis?
BVA is similar to Equivalence Partitioning but focuses on "corner cases" or values that are usually out of range as defined by the specification. his means that if a function expects all values in range of negative 100 to positive 1000, test inputs would include negative 101 and positive 1001.

What is Branch Testing?
Testing in which all branches in the program source code are tested at least once.

What is Breadth Testing?
A test suite that exercises the full functionality of a product but does not test features in detail.

What is CAST?
Computer Aided Software Testing.
What is CMMI?
What do you like about computers?

Do you have a favourite QA book? More than one? Which ones? And why.

What is the responsibility of programmers vs QA?

What are the properties of a good requirement?

Ho to do test if we have minimal or no documentation about the product?

What are all the basic elements in a defect report?

Is an "A fast database retrieval rate" a testable requirement?

What is software quality assurance?

What is the value of a testing group? How do you justify your work and budget?

What is the role of the test group vis-à-vis documentation, tech support, and so forth?

How much interaction with users should testers have, and why?

How should you learn about problems discovered in the field, and what should you learn from those problems?

What are the roles of glass-box and black-box testing tools?

What issues come up in test automation, and how do you manage them?
What is Capture/Replay Tool?
A test tool that records test input as it is sent to the software under test. The input cases stored can then be used to reproduce the test at a later time. Most commonly applied to GUI test tools.

What is CMM?
The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM or SW-CMM) is a model for judging the maturity of the software processes of an organization and for identifying the key practices that are required to increase the maturity of these processes.

What is Cause Effect Graph?
A graphical representation of inputs and the associated outputs effects which can be used to design test cases.

What is Code Complete?
Phase of development where functionality is implemented in entirety; bug fixes are all that are left. All functions found in the Functional Specifications have been implemented.

What is Code Coverage?
An analysis method that determines which parts of the software have been executed (covered) by the test case suite and which parts have not been executed and therefore may require additional attention.
What is Code Inspection?
A formal testing technique where the programmer reviews source code with a group who ask questions analyzing the program logic, analyzing the code with respect to a checklist of historically common programming errors, and analyzing its compliance with coding standards.

What is Code Walkthrough?
A formal testing technique where source code is traced by a group with a small set of test cases, while the state of program variables is manually monitored, to analyze the programmer's logic and assumptions.

What is Coding?
The generation of source code.

What is Compatibility Testing?
Testing whether software is compatible with other elements of a system with which it should operate, e.g. browsers, Operating Systems, or hardware.
What is Component?
A minimal software item for which a separate specification is available.

What is Component Testing?
See the question what is Unit Testing.

What is Concurrency Testing?
Multi-user testing geared towards determining the effects of accessing the same application code, module or database records. Identifies and measures the level of locking, deadlocking and use of single-threaded code and locking semaphores.

What is Conformance Testing?
The process of testing that an implementation conforms to the specification on which it is based. Usually applied to testing conformance to a formal standard.

What is Context Driven Testing?
The context-driven school of software testing is flavor of Agile Testing that advocates continuous and creative evaluation of testing opportunities in light of the potential information revealed and the value of that information to the organization right now.
What development model should programmers and the test group use?
How do you get programmers to build testability support into their code?

What is the role of a bug tracking system?

What are the key challenges of testing?

Have you ever completely tested any part of a product? How?

Have you done exploratory or specification-driven testing?

Should every business test its software the same way?

Discuss the economics of automation and the role of metrics in testing.

Describe components of a typical test plan, such as tools for interactive products and for database products, as well as cause-and-effect graphs and data-flow diagrams.

When have you had to focus on data integrity?

What are some of the typical bugs you encountered in your last assignment?

How do you prioritize testing tasks within a project?

How do you develop a test plan and schedule? Describe bottom-up and top-down approaches.

When should you begin test planning?

When should you begin testing?

What is Conversion Testing?
Testing of programs or procedures used to convert data from existing systems for use in replacement systems.

What is Cyclomatic Complexity?
A measure of the logical complexity of an algorithm, used in white-box testing.

What is Data Dictionary?
A database that contains definitions of all data items defined during analysis.

What is Data Flow Diagram?
A modeling notation that represents a functional decomposition of a system.

What is Data Driven Testing?
Testing in which the action of a test case is parameterized by externally defined data values, maintained as a file or spreadsheet. A common technique in Automated Testing.

What is Debugging?
The process of finding and removing the causes of software failures.

What is Defect?
Nonconformance to requirements or functional / program specification

What is Dependency Testing?
Examines an application's requirements for pre-existing software, initial states and configuration in order to maintain proper functionality.

What is Depth Testing?
A test that exercises a feature of a product in full detail.

What is Dynamic Testing?
Testing software through executing it. See also Static Testing.

What is Emulator?
A device, computer program, or system that accepts the same inputs and produces the same outputs as a given system.
What is Endurance Testing?
Checks for memory leaks or other problems that may occur with prolonged execution.

What is End-to-End testing?
Testing a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if appropriate.

What is Equivalence Class?
A portion of a component's input or output domains for which the component's behaviour is assumed to be the same from the component's specification.

What is Equivalence Partitioning?
A test case design technique for a component in which test cases are designed to execute representatives from equivalence classes.

What is Exhaustive Testing?
Testing which covers all combinations of input values and preconditions for an element of the software under test.
What is Functional Decomposition?
A technique used during planning, analysis and design; creates a functional hierarchy for the software.

What is Functional Specification?
A document that describes in detail the characteristics of the product with regard to its intended features.

What is Functional Testing?
Testing the features and operational behavior of a product to ensure they correspond to its specifications.
Testing that ignores the internal mechanism of a system or component and focuses solely on the outputs generated in response to selected inputs and execution conditions.
See also What is Black Box Testing.

What is Glass Box Testing?
A synonym for White Box Testing.
Do you know of metrics that help you estimate the size of the testing effort?
How do you scope out the size of the testing effort?

How many hours a week should a tester work?

How should your staff be managed? How about your overtime?

How do you estimate staff requirements?

What do you do (with the project tasks) when the schedule fails?

How do you handle conflict with programmers?

How do you know when the product is tested well enough?

What characteristics would you seek in a candidate for test-group manager?

What do you think the role of test-group manager should be? Relative to senior management? Relative to other technical groups in the company? Relative to your staff?

How do your characteristics compare to the profile of the ideal manager that you just described?

How does your preferred work style work with the ideal test-manager role that you just described? What is different between the way you work and the role you described?

Who should you hire in a testing group and why?
What is Gorilla Testing?
Testing one particular module, functionality heavily.

What is Gray Box Testing?
A combination of Black Box and White Box testing methodologies? testing a piece of software against its specification but using some knowledge of its internal workings.