Software Testing Interview Questions and Answers

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Software Testing Interview Questions

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Software Testing Interview Questions and
Answers

In this post, we will look at some common Software Testing Interview Questions that you may
be asked when you attend a Software Testing Interview. The answers to the interview
questions is for guidance only. You may want to expand on the answers at the interview if you
are asked any of these Software Testing Interview Questions.

Question: What is Exploratory Testing and when should it be

performed?
Answer: The de"nition 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 'y and executed against the software under test.
On an exploratory testing session, the tester executes a chain of actions against the system,

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each action depends on the result of the previous action, hence the outcome of the result of
the actions could in'uence 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 "nal check
before the software is released. It is a complimentary activity to automated regression testing.

Question: What Test Techniques are there and what is their

purpose?
Answer: Test Techniques are primarily used for two purposes: 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
di+erent 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.

Question: How do you test the login feature of a web

application?
This is a very common software testing interview question and the aim is to see how broad you
can think about the feature. Most interviewees start with the obvious answer of checking input
"elds with positive and negative values, invalid email, valid email but incorrect password, sql
injection, etc. But most of these tests can be done and should be done by the developers as
part of integration testing.
Here the focus is on testing at system level, tests which cannot be done without a full
integrated system.
Answer: Possible answers to this testing interview question can be:

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Sign in with valid login, Close browser and reopen and see whether you are still logged in
or not.
Session management is important how do we keep track of logged in users, is it via
cookies or web sessions?
Sign in, then logout and then go back to the login page to see if you are truly logged out.
Login, then go back to the same page, do you see the login screen again?
Sign infrom one browser, then open another browser to see if you need to sign in again?
Login, change password, and then logout, then see if you can login again with the old
password.

Question:What Types of Testing is Speci0cally Important for

Web Testing?
This is also an important Software Testing interview question for web application testing
roles.Note, this question is asking about the types of testing.
Although you would do functional testing, usability testing, accessibility testing, etc, these are
all also applicable to desktop application testing. The question is asking speci"cally for web
testing.
Answer: Two types of testing which are very important for testing web applications are
Performance Testing and Security Testing.The di+erence between a web application and
desktop application, is that web applications are open to the world, with potentially many
users accessing the application simultaneously at various times, so load testing and stress
testing are important.
Web applications are also vulnerable to all forms of attacks, mostly DDOS, so security testing
is also very important to consider when testing web applications.

Question: How do You Verify the Results of Your Search on

Search Results Page?
This is another common Software Testing Interview Question for e-commerce testing roles.
This question refers to verifying the results are what we expect to see.

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Suppose you search for a product on Amazon.com website. On the search results page you
will see a list of items related to your search. How can you verify that the results that you see
are really the ones that you are supposed to see?
Answer:The answer to this question is rather simple. At "rst instance, we need to know where
the data is coming from. Are they coming from a database? Or some XML "les from 3rd party
websites?
Once we have this information, we can start comparingthe results we see on the result page
with the results from the source, e.g. database.
Another option is to use mocks to generate the data that we need so we can fully control the
data that we see on the search results page.
What isAcceptance 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 agreedacceptance
criteria.
What isAccessibility 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 systems
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
oftesting and emphasizing a test-"rst design paradigm. See also Test Driven Development.
What isApplication Programming Interface (API)?
A formalized set of software calls androutines that can bereferenced 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 ofa software product conducted by customers.

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What is Black Box Testing?

Testing based on an analysis of the speci"cation 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 "rst, 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.
Read the full Software Testing Glossary
For Test Automation Interview Questions and Answers, click here
For Agile Testing Interview Questions and Answers, click here

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