Interview Q/A

Ques.1. What is software testing?
Ans. Software testing is evaluating a system to check if it satisfies the business requirement. It measures the overall quality of the system in terms of attributes like correctness, completeness, usability, performance etc.

Ques.2. Why is Testing required?
Ans. We need software testing for following reasons-

Testing provides an assurance to the stakeholders that product works as intended
Avoidable defects leaked to the end user/customer without proper testing adds bad reputation to the development company
Separate testing phase adds a confidence factor to the stakeholders regarding quality of the software developed
Defects detected earlier phase of SDLC results into lesser cost and resource utilisation of correction
Saves development time by detecting issues in earlier phase of development
Testing team adds another dimension to the software development by providing a different view point to the product development process

Ques.3. When should we stop testing?
Ans. Testing can be stopped based on the following conditions –

On completion of all the scripted test cases.
Once the testing deadline is met.
When the code coverage reaches a certain threshold.

Ques.4. What is Quality Assurance?
Quality assurance is a process driven approach which checks if the process of developing the product is correct and conforming to all the standards.

Ques.5. What is Quality Control?
Ans. Quality control is product driven approach which checks that the developed product conforms to all the specified requirements.

Ques.6. What is validation?
Ans. Validation is the process of validating that the developed software product conforms to the specified business requirements. It involves dynamic testing of software product by running it.

Ques.7. What is verification?
Ans. Verification is the process of evaluating the artifacts of software development in order to ensure that the product being developed will comply to the standards. It is static process of analysing the documents and not the actual end product.

Ques.8. What is SDLC?
Ans. Software Development Life Cycle refers to all the activities that are performed during software development including- requirement analysis, designing, implementation, testing, deployment and maintenance phases.

software development lifecycle

Ques.9. Explain STLC – Software Testing life cycle.
Software testing life cycle refers to all the activities performed during testing of a software product. The phases include-

Requirement analyses and validation – In this phase the requirements documents are analysed and validated and scope of testing is defined.
Test planning – In this phase test plan strategy is defined, estimation of test effort is defined along with automation strategy and tool selection is done.
Test Design and analysis – In this phase test cases are designed, test data is prepared and automation scripts are implemented.
Test environment setup – A test environment closely simulating the real world environment is prepared.
Test execution – The test cases are prepared, bugs are reported and retested once resolved.
Test closure and reporting – A test closure report is prepared having the final test results summary, learnings and test metrics.

Ques.10. What are the different types of testing?
Testing can broadly be defined into two types-

Functional testing – In functional testing, the system is tested for validity of the functional specification or it involves validating the functionality of the system
Non Functional testing – Non functional testing includes testing the non-functional requirements of the system like performance, security, scalability, portability, endurance etc.

Going by the way the testing is done, it can be categorized as-

Black box testing – In black box testing, the tester need not have any knowledge of the internal architecture or implementation of the system. The tester interact with the system through the interface providing input and validating the received output.
White box testing – In white box testing the tester analyses the internal architecture of the system as well as the quality of source code on different parameters like code optimization, code coverage, code reusability etc.
Gray box testing – In gray box testing, the tester has partial access to the internal architecture of the system e.g. the tester may have access to the design documents or database structure. This information helps tester to test the application better.

Ques.11. What is a bug?
Ans. A bug is a fault in a software product detected at the time of testing, causing it to function in an unanticipated manner.

Ques.12. What is a defect?
Ans, A defect is non-conformance with the requirement of the product detected in production by the end user.

Ques.13. What is alpha testing?
Ans. Alpha testing is the testing done by a group of potential end users or some independent test team at the developer site.

Ques.14. What is defect density?
Ans. Defect density is the measure of density of the defects in the system. It can be calculated by dividing number of defect identified by the total number of line of code(or methods or classes) in the application or program.

Ques.15. What is defect priority?
Ans. A defect priority is the urgency of the fixing the defect. Normally the defect priority is set on a scale of P0 to P3 with P0 defect having the most urgency to fix.

Ques.16. What is defect severity?
Ans. Defect severity is the severity of the defect impacting the functionality. Based on the organisation we can different levels of defect severity ranging from minor to scritical or show stopper.

Ques.17. Give an example of Low priority-Low severity, Low priority-High severity, High priority-Low severity, High priority-High severity defects.
Ans.

Low priority-Low severity – A spelling mistake in a page not frequently navigated by users.
Low priority-High severity – Application crashing in some very corner case.
High priority-Low severity – Slight change in logo color or spelling mistake in company name.
High priority-High severity – Issue with login functionality.

Ques.18. What is a blocker?
Ans. A blocker is a bug of high priority and high severity. It prevents or blocks testing of some other major portion of the application as well.

Ques.19. What is a critical bug?
Ans. A criticla bug is a bug that impacts a major functionality of the application and the application cannot be delivered without fixing the bug. It is different from blocker bug as it doesn’t affect or blocks the testing of other part of the application.

Ques.20. What is a test plan?
Ans. A test plan is a formal document describing the scope of testing, the approach to be used, resources required and time estimate of carrying out the testing process.

Ques.21. What is a test scenario?
Ans. A test scenario is a high level documentation for a use case. A single test scenario can cater multiple test cases.

Ques.22. What is a test case?
Ans. A test case is set of conditions with given pre-requisites, input values and expected results in a documented form which covers a particular test scenario.

Ques.23. What are some attributes of a Test case?
Ans. A test case can have following attributes-

TestCaseId – A unique identifier of the test case.
Test Summary – Oneliner summary of the test case.
Description – Detailed description of the test case.
Prerequisite or pre-condition – A set of prerequisites that must be followed before executing the test steps.
Test Steps – Detailed steps for performing the test case.
Expected result – The expected result in order to pass the test.
Actual result – The actual result after executing the test steps.
Test Result – Pass/Fail status of the test execution.
Automation Status – Identifier of automation – whether the application is automated or not.
Date – The test execution date.
Executed by – Name of the person executing the test case.