Top Software Testing Interview Questions and Answers 2023

LISTEN TO THE SOFTWARE TESTING INTERVIEW FAQs LIKE AN AUDIOBOOK

The software testing process is vital to ensure that the final product is of good quality and meets the client or end-user requirements. That's why a software testing interview is critical. In a software testing interview, the interviewer analyses the skills and expertise of the interviewee in software testing and how their knowledge can help prevent bugs, reduce development costs, and improve product performance. Therefore, preparing common Software Testing interview questions is indispensable to excel in a software developer or app developer interview.

What to Expect in a Software Testing Interview?

To prepare for the software testing interview, the interviewee should familiarize themselves with top Software Testing interview questions.

The interviewer may ask questions on different testing levels, testing methods, bug life cycle, usability testing, etc. The interviewer may also require the interviewee to describe how they would define the test strategy, test case development, environment setup, and test execution.

The applicants must also study the company's software testing process and understand the job role they have applied for. Understanding various software testing tools and how they can be applied in different scenarios is also essential. The primary goal is to show how software testing knowledge can improve software quality.

When answering technical interview questions on software testing, it is essential to be concise, clear, and accurate. The candidate should provide detailed and specific examples of their software testing knowledge and highlight their strengths and achievements. They should also be able to explain how they would handle different testing methods, including creating a test case and managing testing resources.

Job Options After Preparing Software Testing Interview Questions

You can explore various job options in software testing after practicing common Software Testing interview questions and answers. Below are some of the most rewarding career options which you can consider:

  • Software Tester/QA Analyst: As a software tester, you will be responsible for testing software applications and ensuring they meet the required quality standards. You will execute test cases, report,, and track defects, and work closely with developers to resolve issues.
  • Test Automation Engineer: Test automation engineers focus on developing and implementing automated test scripts to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process. Knowledge of test automation frameworks and tools is essential for this role.
  • Quality Assurance Lead: QA leads are responsible for coordinating testing efforts, developing test plans, and overseeing the work of software testers. They ensure the testing process is well-organized and meets the project's requirements.
  • Software Test Manager: As a test manager, you will manage the entire testing process in a project. This includes planning, resource allocation, setting testing strategies, and coordinating with other stakeholders.
  • Performance Testing Engineer: Performance testing engineers specialize in testing software applications' performance, scalability, and responsiveness under different load conditions. They use specialized tools to simulate various user scenarios and analyze system performance.
  • Security Testing Specialist: Security testers focus on identifying vulnerabilities and weaknesses in software applications, ensuring they are secure against potential threats and cyberattacks.
  • Mobile App Tester: With the rise of mobile applications, there is a demand for testers specializing in mobile app testing. They ensure mobile apps work as expected on various devices and operating systems.
  • Game Tester: For this position, you will be responsible for testing video games and identifying bugs or issues that affect gameplay, graphics, or user experience.
  • Web Application Tester: It is one of the most popular career paths that tech aspirants choose after practicing top Software Testing interview questions. Web application testers focus on testing web-based applications, including websites and web services, across different browsers and devices.
  • Usability Tester: Usability testers assess the user-friendliness of software applications, websites, or mobile apps, ensuring they meet the intended user experience and interface requirements.

As all these jobs are in high demand, so pursuing one can future-proof your tech career and enlarge your income prospects.

Benefits of Learning Software Testing Interview questions

Learning theoretical and technical interview questions on software testing can be beneficial for several reasons, such as:

  • Interview Preparation: If you're aspiring to work in the software testing domain or looking for a new job in this field, familiarizing yourself with common interview questions will help you prepare effectively. Knowing what to expect in an interview can boost your confidence and increase your chances of performing well.
  • Understanding Industry Trends: Interview questions often reflect current industry trends and best practices. By learning top Software Testing interview questions, you gain insights into the latest technologies, methodologies, and tools used in software testing.
  • Communication Skills: Responding to interview questions requires effective communication. Learning and practicing how to articulate your thoughts clearly and concisely will impress interviewers and help you in your daily interactions with team members and stakeholders.
  • Preventing Common Mistakes: Some interview questions might focus on common mistakes made during testing. Learning about these mistakes allows you to allows you to become more vigilant during testing activities and avoid similar pitfalls in real-world scenarios.
  • Preparation for Technical Rounds: In technical interview rounds, you might be asked to solve problems or answer technical questions related to testing. By studying software testing interview questions, you can familiarize yourself with the types of challenges you may encounter.
  • Enhanced Technical Knowledge: Software testing interview questions and answers often cover various testing concepts, testing types, and techniques. Studying these questions will deepen your understanding of testing principles, making you a more proficient tester.
  • Confidence Building: The more you practice answering interview questions, the more confident you'll become in your skills and abilities. This confidence will shine through during the actual interview and leave a positive impression on the interviewers.
  • Versatility in Approach: Different organizations might have different testing practices and requirements. By learning a wide range of interview questions, you'll be better equipped to adapt your approach and knowledge to suit the specific needs of the company you're interviewing with.
  • Analyzing Real-Life Scenarios: Many interview questions are designed to assess your problem-solving skills and ability to handle real-life testing scenarios. You can hone your critical thinking and decision-making capabilities by practicing these questions.
  • Personal Growth and Learning: Even if you're not actively job-seeking, learning software testing interview questions can be a valuable exercise for personal growth. Continuous learning is essential in the ever-evolving field of software testing, and exploring interview questions is one way to keep your skills sharp.

As the software testing interview process is critical to employ professionals in manual and automation testing, it is crucial to have a solid understanding of the same. To help brush up with the software testing skills, we have created a list of top Software Testing interview questions 2023. These Interview questions are useful whether you are a beginner or an experienced tester. So, let's get started.

Answer:

Software testing involves evaluating and verifying a software product’s functionality. Basically, it checks whether the software product matches anticipated requirements and makes sure it is defect-free. It can be said that testing enhances the quality of the product by preventing bugs, reducing development costs, and reducing performance issues.

Answer:

Different kinds of software testing are as follow:

  • Unit Testing: A programmatic test that tests the internal working of a unit of code, such as a method or a function.
  • Integration Testing: Ensures that multiple components of systems work as expected when they are combined to produce a result.
  • Regression Testing: Ensures that existing features/functionality that used to work are not broken due to new code changes.
  • System Testing: Complete end-to-end testing is done on the complete software to make sure the whole system works as expected.
  • Smoke Testing: A quick test performed to ensure that the software works at the most basic level and doesn’t crash when it’s started. Its name originates from the hardware testing where you just plug the device and see if smoke comes out.
  • Performance Testing: Ensures that the software performs according to the user’s expectations by checking the response time and throughput under specific load and environment.
  • User-Acceptance Testing: Ensures the software meets the requirements of the clients or users. This is typically the last step before the software is live, i.e. it goes to production.
  • Stress Testing: Ensures that the performance of the software doesn’t degrade when the load increases. In stress testing, the tester subjects the software under heavy loads, such as a high number of requests or stringent memory conditions to verify if it works well.
  • Usability Testing: Measures how usable the software is. This is typically performed with a sample set of end-users, who use the software and provide feedback on how easy or complicated it is to use the software.
  • Security Testing: Now more important than ever. Security testing tries to break a software’s security checks, to gain access to confidential data. Security testing is crucial for web-based applications or any applications that involve money.

Answer:

Software testing is directed by seven principles:

  •  Absence of errors fallacy: Even if the software is 99% bug-free, it is unusable if it does not conform to the user’s requirements. Software needs to be bug-free 99% of the time, and it must also meet all customer requirements.
  • Testing shows the presence of errors: Testing can verify the presence of defects in software, but it cannot guarantee that the software is defect-free. Testing can minimize the number of defects, but it can’t remove them all.
  • Exhaustive testing is not possible: The software cannot be tested exhaustively, which means all possible test cases cannot be covered. Testing can only be done with a select few test cases, and it’s assumed that the software will produce the right output in all cases. Taking the software through every test case will cost more, take more effort, etc., which makes it impractical.
  • Defect clustering: The majority of defects are typically found in a small number of modules in a project. According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of software defects arise from 20% of modules.
  • Pesticide Paradox: It is impossible to find new bugs by re-running the same test cases over and over again. Thus, updating or adding new test cases is necessary in order to find new bugs.
  • Early testing: Early testing is crucial to finding the defect in the software. In the early stages of SDLC, defects will be detected more easily and at a lower cost. Software testing should start at the initial phase of software development, which is the requirement analysis phase.
  • Testing is context-dependent: The testing approach varies depending on the software development context. Software needs to be tested differently depending on its type. For instance, an ed-tech site is tested differently than an Android app.

Answer:

End to End testing is the process of testing a software system from start to finish. The tester tests the software just like an end-user would. For example, to test a desktop software, the tester would install the software as the user would, open it, use the application as intended, and verify the behavior.

Answer:

When software is being tested, the code coverage measures how much of the program’s source code is covered by the test plan. Code coverage testing runs in parallel with actual product testing. Using the code coverage tool, you can monitor the execution of statements in your source code. A complete report of the pending statements, along with the coverage percentage, is provided at the end of the final testing.

Answer:

Following are the different types of test coverage techniques:

  • Statement/Block Coverage: Measures how many statements in the source code have been successfully executed and tested.
  • Decision/Branch Coverage: This metric measures how many decision control structures were successfully executed and tested.
  • Path Coverage: This ensures that the tests are conducted on every possible route through a section of the code.
  • Function coverage: It measures how many functions in the source code have been executed and tested at least once.

Answer:

  • Black-box testing in software testing: In black-box testing, the system is tested only in terms of its external behaviour; it does not consider how the software functions on the inside. This is the only limitation of the black-box test. It is used in Acceptance Testing and System Testing.
  • White-box testing in software testing: A white-box test is a method of testing a program that takes into account its internal workings as part of its review. It is used in integration testing and unit testing.
  • Grey-box testing in software testing: A Grey Box Testing technique can be characterized as a combination of a black box as well as a white box testing technique used in the software testing process. Using this technique, you can test a software product or application with a partial understanding of its internal structure.

Answer:

  • Test Case: Test Cases are a series of actions executed during software development to verify a particular feature or function. A test case consists of test steps, test data, preconditions, and post conditions designed to verify a specific requirement.
  • Test Scenario: Usually, a test scenario consists of a set of test cases covering the end-to-end functionality of a software application. A test scenario provides a high-level overview of what needs to be tested.
  • Test Scripts: When it comes to software testing, a test script refers to the set of instructions that will be followed in order to verify that the system under test performs as expected. The document outlines each step to be taken and the expected results.

Answer:

Bugs and errors differ in the following ways:

  • Software bugs are defects, which occur when the software or an application does not work as intended. A bug occurs when there is a coding error, which causes the program to malfunction. While, Errors in code are caused by problems with the code, which means that the developer could have misunderstood the requirement or the requirement was not defined correctly, leading to a mistake.
  • The bug is submitted by the testers. Whereas, Errors are raised by test engineers and developers.
  • Logic bugs, resource bugs, and algorithmic bugs are types of bugs. On the other hand, Syntactic error, error handling error, error handling error, user interface error, flow control error, calculation error, and testing error are types of errors.
  • The software is detected before it is deployed in production. In contrast, the error occurs when the code is unable to be compiled.

Answer:

The risk-based testing is a testing strategy that is based on prioritizing tests by risks. It is based on a detailed risk analysis approach which categorizes the risks by their priority. Highest priority risks are resolved first.

Answer:

We might have developed the software in one platform, and the chances are there that users might use it in the different platforms. Hence, it could be possible that they may encounter some bugs and stop using the application, and the business might get affected. Therefore, we will perform one round of Compatibility testing.

Answer:

  • The test driver is a section of code that calls a software component under test. It is useful in testing that follows the bottom-up approach.
  • The test stub is a dummy program that integrates with an application to complete its functionality. It is relevant for testing that uses the top-down approach.

Answer:

  • Bug leakage: Bug leakage is something, when the bug is discovered by the end user/customer and missed by the testing team to detect while testing the software. It is a defect that exists in the application and not detected by the tester, which is eventually found by the customer/end user.
  • Bug release: A bug release is when a particular version of the software is released with a set of known bug(s). These bugs are usually of low severity/priority. It is done when a software company can afford the existence of bugs in the released software but not the time/cost for fixing it in that particular version.

Answer:

Verification evaluates the software at the development phase, ascertaining whether or not a product meets the expected requirements. On the other hand, validation evaluates the software after the development phase, making it sure it meets the requirements of the customer.

Answer:

This defect is an existing defect in the system which does not cause any failure as the exact set of conditions has never been met.

Answer:

Phantom is a freeware and is used for windows GUI automation scripting language. It allows us to take control of windows and functions automatically. It can simulate any combination of keystrokes and mouse clicks as well as menus, lists and more.

Answer:

When the presence of one defect hides the presence of another defect in the system, it is known as fault masking.

Example: If the “Negative Value” cause a firing of unhandled system exception, the developer will prevent the negative values input. This will resolve the issue and hide the defect of unhandled exception firing.

Answer:

The variation of regression testing is represented as N+1. In this technique, the testing is performed in multiple cycles in which errors found in test cycle ‘N’ are resolved and re-tested in test cycle N+1. The cycle is repeated unless there are no errors found.

Answer:

Fuzz testing is used to detect security loopholes and coding errors in software. In this technique, random data is added to the system in an attempt to crash the system. If vulnerability persists, a tool called fuzz tester is used to determine potential causes. This technique is more useful for bigger projects but only detects a major fault.

Answer:

Random testing is often known as monkey testing. In such type of testing data is generated randomly often using a tool or automated mechanism. With this randomly generated input, the system is tested, and results are analyzed accordingly. These testing are less reliable; hence it is normally used by the beginners and to see whether the system will hold up under adverse effects.