We’ve assembled the 20 most important Software testing interview questions for beginners. All these questions have appeared in the software testing interviews held by top IT companies.
Why Need for Software Testing Interview Questions?
If you read them thoroughly, it will help you face the interview with confidence. And if you have any doubt about any of the questions, let us know.
We’ve tried this online questionnaire to be as useful as it could be for Software Testers. You can use this list as a quick reference. It will help you revise the basic principles of Software testing in your free time.
Questions like equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, state transition testing, decision table, traceability matrix, and risk analysis are still relevant and will always be. Here, we’ve answered them all in a simplified manner so that you can understand the concepts instead of just memorizing the answers.
List of 20 Software Testing Interview Questions
Let’s first check upon a couple of Software testing questions on key testing terms used in interviews.
1. What is equivalence partitioning? Explain by example.
Answer. Equivalence partitioning is a famous black box testing technique. It defines the effectiveness of manual test cases. You can apply it to different testing areas like unit testing, acceptance testing, integration testing, and so on. It suggests splitting the test data into multiple sets and selecting one input from each set.
It’s feasible to validate all data points from the domain. Any attempt to do so will result in many test cases. Hence, you should apply this technique in such situations. It classifies the data into different classes where each class lays the input criteria from the equivalence class.
For example, let’s assume an application that accepts dates from the calendar year. If we apply the above technique, we can break the inputs into classes—for example, one for valid dates and another for invalid dates. We’ll now create test cases from each class.
TC#1. Valid date class would allow cases with dates from the current calendar year.
TC#2. Dates from years other than the current calendar year would belong to the invalid class.
2. What is boundary value analysis? Explain by example.
Answer. Most of the errors emanate either from the head or the tail ends of the test data. The values at these extreme ends are the boundary values. And the process to analyze them is Boundary value analysis. We may sometimes call it <range checking>.
It’s one more black-box testing approach that focuses on finding errors at the terminating ends of the input domain. You can use this technique at all levels of testing.
While designing test cases using BV, you should consider both valid and invalid boundary values for the edges. Usually, we pick one test case from each boundary.
Understanding the principles of black-box and white-box testing is crucial when preparing for software testing interview questions
Let’s see some examples to demonstrate the use of BV analysis.
TC#1. The first test case will analyze exact boundary values from the input data. Considering the example in Q:1, it would be the dates from January and the dates from December.
TC#2. For invalid values, you may consider using the dates from months other than Jan or Dec.
Must Read: Defect Life Cycle
3. What is state transition testing? Explain by example.
Answer. This approach is best suitable where there is a possibility to view the whole system as a <finite state machine>. It works on the notion that a system can be in a finite number of distinct states. And it’s the rules of the machine that drive the transitions from one state to another.
It’s the model which is the basis for the system and the test cases. Any system that produces a different output for the constant input, depending on what has happened before, is a finite state system.
For example. you can consider a bank account. If you use it regularly, it’ll stay active. If you don’t make any transactions over 12 months, then your account will become inactive. You can though choose to close your account. Once it’s closed, you can not use it until you reopen. So, a bank account can have the following states.
1. Open,
2. Inactive,
3. Close,
4. Reopen.
Hence, you can design cases to test all transitions around the states mentioned above. In this model, you measure coverage in terms of switches, see below.
1. <0-switch> => You are testing every valid transition.
2. <1-switch> => You’ve covered the pair of two valid transitions.
3. <2-switch> => You need to test the sets of 3 transitions for this coverage.
4. What is the difference between white, black, and grey box testing?
Answer. The Black box testing is a testing approach that depends completely on the product requirements and specifications. The knowledge of internal paths, structures, or implementation of the software isn’t a pre-requisite for it.
White box testing is a testing mechanism that covers the internal paths, code structures, and implementation of the software under test. It generally demands that a tester should possess serious programming skills.
Grey box testing is one that makes you look into the “BOX” (The application under test AUT) being tested to understand the implementation. Finally, you close the box and apply knowledge to choose more effective black box tests.
5. What are the categories of defects?
Answer. There are three main categories of defects:
5.1. Wrong: It indicates a mismatch in the requirement and implementation. It implies a variance from the given specification.
5.2. Missing: The end product doesn’t have a feature matching the requirement. It’s a variance from the specifications and represents that you didn’t document the requirement properly.
5.3. Extra: You added a feature that the customer didn’t ask for. It’s again a variance from the specification. And the users of the product may like this feature. But it’s still a defect because it’s not part of the specs.
Also Read: Difference Between a Bug
6. What is the basis for preparing an acceptance plan?
Answer. First of all, you need inputs from the following areas to prepare for the acceptance document. These may vary from company to company and from project to project.
6.1. Requirement document: This document specifies what exactly is needed in the project from the customer’s perspective.
6.2. Customer Input: It could be discussions, informal chats, email addresses, etc.
6.3. Project Plan: The project plan from the project manager (PM) also serves as a good input to conclude your acceptance test.
7. What is the Requirement Traceability Matrix?
Answer. It’s a common Software testing interview question that you might get asked during an interview. The Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) is a requirement tracking tool that ensures the requirements are the same for the whole development process. There are the following reasons to use it:
7.1. To determine whether the developed project is meeting the requirements of the user.
7.2. To determine all the requirements given by the user.
7.3. To make sure the application requirement can be fulfilled in the verification process.
8. What is risk analysis in software testing? Provide some examples.
Answer. Risk analysis is the process of foreseeing the risks in an application and prioritizing them to test. Following are some of the risks:
8.1- New Hardware.
8.2. New Technology.
8.3. New Automation Tool.
8.4. The sequence of code delivery.
8.5. Availability of application and test resources.
You can prioritize them into three categories in the following manner:
i. High magnitude: Impact of the bug on the other functionality of the application.
ii. Medium: It can be tolerable in the application but not desirable.
iii. Low: It can be bearable. This type of risk has no impact on the company’s business.
9. How to deal with a bug that is intermittent (not reproducible)?
Answer. It’s one of the practical software testing interview questions. A bug might not be reproducible for a variety of reasons. Some of these are as follows.
9.1. Low memory.
9.2. Addressing an unavailable memory location.
9.3. Things happening in a particular sequence.
10. When is the decision table testing done?
Answer. Decision Table Testing is done when:
👉 The system has a lot of rules, combinations, or conditions that affect outcomes.
In other words: If your software needs to make decisions based on multiple inputs (like “if A and B are true, do X, otherwise do Y…”), then decision table testing helps you organize and test all those possibilities systematically.
11. What is boundary testing?
Answer. Boundary Testing (also called boundary value testing) is a real and very important software testing technique where you test at the edges of input ranges — because that’s where bugs usually hide.
Idea: Most programs behave normally with “middle” values. Problems usually happen at the minimum, maximum, just below, or just above allowed values. So in boundary testing, you test right at and around those edges.
12. What is branch testing?
Answer. Branch Testing is a software testing technique where the goal is to make sure that every possible branch (or decision point) in your code is tested at least once. In simple words:
👉 Whenever your code has an if, else, switch, or any condition that causes the program to take different paths, branch testing tries to ensure both the true and false paths are tested.
13. What is breadth testing?
Answer. Breadth Testing is a software testing technique where you test as many features or functionalities as possible within a limited time, but without going deep into any of them. It’s essentially about covering a wide range of features to ensure they work at a surface level, but you’re not necessarily testing them in great detail.
14. What is alpha testing?
Answer. Alpha Testing is a type of software testing done to catch bugs and ensure the software works as expected before it’s released to a wider audience. It typically happens in the early stages of release, just after the software is developed and internally tested by the development team.
15. What is beta testing?
Answer. Beta Testing is the phase of software testing that occurs after Alpha Testing, where the product is released to a limited external audience (real users or a group of testers) for feedback before the final public release. Unlike Alpha Testing, which is conducted internally, Beta Testing involves real-world usage to identify issues that might not have been caught in earlier tests.
16. What is component testing?
Answer. Component Testing (also known as Unit Testing or Module Testing) is a type of software testing that focuses on verifying the individual components or units of a software system in isolation. The goal is to ensure that each component or module works as intended before it’s integrated with other parts of the system.
17. What is end-to-end (E2E) testing?
Answer. End-to-End (E2E) Testing is a type of software testing that verifies the entire application or system from start to finish, ensuring that all the components, services, and processes involved in a workflow function correctly together in a real-world scenario. The goal is to simulate how a user would interact with the application to confirm that everything works as expected when integrated.
18. What is monkey testing?
Answer. Monkey Testing is a type of software testing where testers has to randomly test the application. They don’t follow any structured test case or predefined strategy. The goal is to explore the software by simulating unexpected user behaviour. It may help in identifying bugs, crashes, or vulnerabilities that may not be caught during regular testing.
19. What is the difference between baseline and benchmark testing?
Answer. Following are the primary differences between the baseline and benchmark testing.
- Baseline testing is done to collect the performance data of an application. Benchmark testing is used to compare the app’s performance with the industry standard.
- Baseline testing can reveal areas for performance improvement based on the collected data. Benchmark testing returns the information of the target application vs. other applications.
- Baseline testing compares the current performance with the application’s previous performance whereas benchmark testing compares our app’s performance with the competitor’s performance.
20. What is the role of QA in project development?
Answer. The QA (Quality Assurance) team plays a crucial role in ensuring the quality of the software product throughout its development lifecycle.
- The QA team is responsible for ensuring the quality of the software product.
- They are involved in planning, testing, and execution.
- QA manager prepares an estimate and agrees on a Quality Assurance plan for the product.
- He explains the QA process to the team members.
- The test engineers ensure the traceability of test cases to requirements.
Summary – Software Testing Interview Questions
We hope you would have liked this tiny list of Software testing interview questions and answers. However, don’t just leave without checking these ultimate Web testing interview questions. And, by the way, if you’ve any queries, please share them with us via email.
You can also submit questions that you think are relevant for the Software testing interviews. We’ll review them and add them to the list. All of our readers would benefit from this.
Lastly, our site needs your support to remain free. Share this post on social media (Linkedin/Twitter) if you gained some knowledge from this tutorial.
Enjoy Testing!
