Software Testing Interview Questions and Answers

Q: What is Exploratory Testing and when should it be performed?

A: The definition of Exploratory Testing is “simultaneous test design and execution” against an application. This means that the tester uses her domain knowledge and testing experience to predict where and under what conditions the system might behave unexpectedly. As the tester starts exploring the system, new test design ideas are thought of on the fly and executed against the software under test.

On an exploratory testing session, the tester executes a chain of actions against the system, each action depends on the result of the previous action, hence the outcome of the result of the actions could influence what the tester does next, therefore the test sessions are not identical.

This is in contrast to Scripted Testing where tests are designed beforehand using the requirements or design documents, usually before the system is ready and execute those exact same steps against the system in another time.

Exploratory Testing is usually performed as the product is evolving (agile) or as a final check before the software is released. It is a complimentary activity to automated regression testing.

Q: What Test Techniques are there and what is their purpose?

A: Test Techniques are primarily used for two purpose: a) To help identify defects, b) To reduce the number of test cases.

• Equivalence partitioning is mainly used to reduce number of test cases by identifying different sets of data that are not the same and only executing one test from each set of data
• Boundary Value Analysis is used to check the behaviour of the system at the boundaries of allowed data.
• State Transition Testing is used to validate allowed and disallowed states and transitions from one state to another by various input data
• Pair-wise or All Pairs Testing is a very powerful test technique and is mainly used to reduce the number of test cases while increasing the coverage of feature combinations.

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 Adhoc 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 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 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 Beta Testing?
Testing of a release of a software product conducted by customers.

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.