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If you’re looking to become a software tester, you’ll want to make sure you handle a few things before you start scheduling interviews. Updating your resume and cover letter is very important, but the real work begins once you land an interview.
It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with software testing and the different job responsibilities you may be taking on should you get the job.
One of the best ways to prepare for your interview is to look at common interview questions and answers for software testers. For this job specifically, you’ll likely be answering a lot of knowledge questions.
Your interviewer is looking to make sure you understand the different specifications they may be looking for. Below, we provide a comprehensive list of questions you may receive in your software testing interview.
What is software testing?
In short, software testing is analyzing software items to detect any differences or abnormalities between existing and required conditions. Software testing also includes the evaluation of software item features.
Can you explain the difference between Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), Test Engineers, and Developers?
SDET understands system functional and quality objectives and is involved in designing, development, and testing. They understand automation needs coding and can provide solutions to teams that reduce repetition.
Test engineers think in terms of passing or failing test cases and working to see if they can break the software. Their job revolves around the test life cycle and typically doesn’t have coding knowledge. Developers think about how to develop systems and make functionalities work. They have the coding knowledge and develop functionalities expected by the customers.
What are the different methods of testing?
The three different software testing methods are black-box testing, a testing strategy based on only requirements and specifications. White box testing is based on internal paths, code, structures, and implementation of the specific software that’s being tested. Gray-box testing is the third and final strategy where the tester has limited knowledge of internal details and works to identify any necessary debugging.
What is configuration management?
Configuration management helps to record all the changes made in the system and ensure the system performance is as expected. It’s the overall process that helps to maintain system resources, computer systems, servers, software, and performance.
What configuration management tools are you familiar with?
In previous jobs, I have worked with configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef, and Saltstack.
What is exploratory testing?
This is a great hands-on approach where testers have minimal planning but are fully involved in test execution. This planning includes creating a test charter, a scope of a specific time for testing, what’s expected to be accomplished, and any possible approaches that could be helpful. The test design and execution activities are usually done in parallel without any formal. However, notes can and should be taken.
Can you explain “use case testing”?
Sure. Use case testing is a black-box testing method that can help testers identify different test scenarios that exercise the full system on each transaction from beginning to end.
What are quality assurance and quality control?
Quality assurance is for process-oriented activities and ensures defects are prevented in the process used by many software applications. Quality control involves product-oriented activities and executes the program to identify any defects in the application.
What is verification?
Verification is a process that ensures whether the product is being built correctly. So, for example, if we’re looking to verify the requirements or to verify if the product is being built according to expectations.
What is usability testing?
This is another testing strategy where the end-user will use the software and provide their thoughts on how easy the product is to use. This is a great way to get customer perspective on the product.
What are the categories of defects?
The three categories of defects are wrong, which implies the requirements have been implemented incorrectly, missing, which implies a specification was not implemented, or a customer requirement was not noted properly, and extra, which is when something has been incorporated into the product that the customer did not request.
What are positive and negative testing?
Positive testing is a strategy to determine if the product is justifying its requirements, while negative testing is determining what the system doesn’t support to do -- so, finding defects.
What is a test strategy?
Test strategy is something I’m very familiar with. It is typically a high-level document that the project manager develops. It captures the testing approach and its goals and is typically modeled from the Business Requirement Specification.
What do test plans contain?
Test design, scope, strategies, and approach and some of the trails that test plan documents contain. Mine usually includes a few different components, including test case identifier, the scope of the project, features to be tested and those not to be tested, any test strategy or approaches, specific deliverables, individual responsibilities, staffing, training, and any risk or contingencies.
In white-box testing, what do you typically verify?
White box testing has a few steps to take to ensure everything is verified properly. First, verify any security holes, then the incomplete paths in the code. Next, verify the flow of structure and refer back to the specifications in the documentation. Verify expected outcomes, then all conditional loops to make sure the functionality is complete. Finally, verify the code line by line.
How about black-box testing?
This method is used without knowing the internal structure of the code or program. The techniques I’ve used for black-box testing are equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, and cause-effect graphing.
What are the different test levels?
The four different test levels are unit/component/program/module testing, integration testing, system testing, and acceptance testing.
What are the most common components of a defect report?
From my experience, the most common components of a defect report include the project name, module name, defect ID, date, and finder. Additionally, I usually include priority level, the severity of the defect, and then any resolution information.
What are the differences between data-driven testing and retesting?
Retesting is when a tester checks for bugs that the development team has fixed to ensure they’re completed. Data-driven testing or DDT is when the application is tested with multiple sets of test data.
What are the steps you take when resolving issues while testing?
First, I record the issues or defects I’ve found. Then, report the issues to a higher-level manager who can then disseminate them to the appropriate teams. Finally, control, which is defining the issue management process.
Can you explain a test scenario?
A test scenario is any functionality of the software that can be tested. It could also be called a test condition or a test possibility.
How about a test case?
The test case is the document containing the specific tests to be executed by a tester. It’s something that is usually developed before testing begins.
What about a test script?
The test script is written in a programming language and used to test part of the functionality of the software.
What is a latent defect?
A latent defect is a defect that exists in the system but doesn’t cause any failures. This is because the exact conditions haven’t been met.
What is the Big Bang approach?
This approach requires combining all modules and verifying the functionality after completion of testing the individual modules. This is a great method for small systems and helps testers save integration testing time.
What about the Top-Down approach?
This testing is done from top to bottom, meaning all high-level modules are tested first until you reach low-level modules. Then you can integrate the low-level modules to a high-level to make sure everything is working appropriately.
And the Bottom-Up approach?
This is the opposite of the top-down approach, by testing from bottom to top. The lowest level modules are tested first, then high-level modules. Then, testers integrate high-level modules to low-level modules to make sure everything is working well.
What is functional testing?
Functional testing is what the system does -- verify that each functional behaves as promised. Testing all functionalities by providing appropriate input will verify whether the output matches the expected output. This type of testing falls under black-box testing.
What is non-functional testing?
Non-functional testing is how well the system performs based on various aspects including performance, load, stress, scalability, security, compatibility, among other things. The goal here is to improve the user experience.
How do you typically conduct Risk Analysis?
For risk analysis, I usually follow the following steps. First, finding the risk score, then crafting a profile of the specific risk. Next, I change the risk properties, then deploy the resources of the test risk. Finally, I make a database of risk.
Do you know the categories of debugging?
My knowledge of categories for debugging are brute force debugging, backtracking, cause elimination, program slicing, and fault tree analysis.
What is fault-masking?
Fault masking is when the presence of one defect hides behind the presence of another defect in the system.
How can you eliminate product risk in your project?
The best way to eliminate product risk in your project is to follow a few steps. First, investigate the specification documents and discuss the project with the stakeholders. This should include the development. Finally, have a walk around the website as if you were an end-user. This will help you understand the project, scope, and potential risk.
What is a common risk that leads to project failure?
Some of the most common risks I am familiar with include not having enough resources, having a faulty test environment, a limited budget, or restrictive time limitations.
What are the benefits of automation testing?
Automation testing has several benefits, including significant time and money savings. Automation testing improves accuracy by avoiding human-generated errors and encourages unattended execution. It also can enable parallel execution. For large test matrices, automation testing is highly recommended.
What is acceptance testing?
Acceptance testing or pre-production testing is done by the end-users in parallel with testers to validate the functionality of the software. Once acceptance testing is successful, formal testing can determine if the application has been developed according to requirements. There are three different types of acceptance testing, including alpha, beta, and gamma.
On what basis is the acceptance plan prepared?
For acceptance plans, they are typically prepared with requirement documents that outline what exactly is needed and not needed from the customer’s perspective, specific input from the customer that may come via email or informal conversations, and the project plan.
What is alpha testing?
Alpha testing is done by the in-house developers who developed the software, as well as testers. This is the preliminary testing performed to identify any bugs before releasing the product to any real users.
What is beta testing?
Beta testing is the final round of testing before a product is released to a wider audience. It’s done by real users of the software in a real environment, making it the first chance for full security and reliability testing.
What is gamma testing?
Gamma testing is done when the software is ready to be released with specific requirements at the client’s place of choice. This is the final stage of testing before software release.
On what basis can you arrive at an estimation for your project?
This can sometimes be on a case-by-case basis for projects. However, I usually consider the number of tasks and how to allocate them to my team best. Then, I estimate the effort required to complete each task and validate the estimation for the client.
Explain how you would allocate a task to team members?
Typically, I just have a team meeting to discuss the initial kick-off to the project. Then, I hand off the specific areas to my team members. For example, analyzing software requirement specifications would be for all members, but creating the test specification would be specifically for my tester or test analyst, and so on.
What is testing type?
Testing type is a standard procedure followed by testers to get an expected test outcome.
What are the most commonly used testing types?
To my knowledge, the most common testing types are unit testing, API testing, integration testing, system testing, install/uninstall testing, and agile testing.
What considerations do you take when monitoring your project?
There are many moving parts when monitoring a project. Typically I focus on staying on schedule, staying under budget, working towards the same goal, amount of resources, any warning signs for issues, and any pressures or concerns from management.
What is stress testing?
Stress testing is when you intentionally overload the system to verify the behavior of the system once the load increases over its design expectations.
What is the key difference between preventative and reactive approaches?
The key difference is that preventative tests are designed early before issues can arise, while reactive tests are designed after the software has been produced.
What is the purpose of exit criteria?
Its purpose is to define when a test level has been completed.
What is decision table testing?
This type of testing is used for testing systems where the specification takes the form of cause-effect or rules combinations. Inputs are listed in a column with outputs in the same column but below the inputs. The table then explores all combinations of inputs to define the outputs produced.