Entries Tagged 'Testing Interview questions' ↓

Boundary value analysis and Equivalence partitioning, explained with simple example:

Boundary value analysis and equivalence partitioning both are test case design strategies in black box testing.

Equivalence Partitioning:

In this method the input domain data is divided into different equivalence data classes. This method is typically used to reduce the total number of test cases to a finite set of testable test cases, still covering maximum requirements.

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Do companies really judge candidate’s testing ability in interviews? Do they ask the questions that really judge the candidate’s skill? What questions should be asked to judge the candidate for software testing field? What is the key process to hire good candidates for software testing positions?

Ok, I am asking to many questions without giving answer to any of it. Well, each question mentioned above will require a separate post to address the problem fairly. Here we will address in short about – How to hire the right candidates for software testing positions?

Companies or interviewers, who are not serious about hiring right candidates, often end with hiring poor performers.

What I mean by “Not serious” here?
- They don’t know why and for what post they are hiring a candidate.
- They either fake or fail to post the exact job opening details.
- Or they don’t want to hire skilled performers at all. Hmm, jealousy might be the key here!

Whichever is the reason, there is definitely loss of organization. Loss in terms of both revenue and growth.

If you need answer to these questions, here is an informative video from Pradeep Soundararajan – Consulting tester of Satisfice Inc in India. He explained what is the current situation of software testing interview process in India and how interviewers are wrong in selecting questions to be asked to candidates. A nice start to spread the awareness and importance of software testing interviews.

Current Software Testing Interview situation:

Click on the bottom right button to see the video in full screen.

You can watch his more video’s on software testing here.

Do not forget to comment your experience on software testing interviews, either as an interviewer or as a candidate.

Related article: Choosing software testing as your career.

Despite of hundreds of web articles on Smoke and sanity testing, many people still have confusion between these terms and keep on asking to me. Here is a simple and understandable difference that can clear your confusion between smoke testing and sanity testing.

Here are the differences you can see:

SMOKE TESTING:

• Smoke testing originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch fire and smoke. In software industry, smoke testing is a shallow and wide approach whereby all areas of the application without getting into too deep, is tested.
• A smoke test is scripted, either using a written set of tests or an automated test
• A Smoke test is designed to touch every part of the application in a cursory way. It’s shallow and wide.
• Smoke testing is conducted to ensure whether the most crucial functions of a program are working, but not bothering with finer details. (Such as build verification).
• Smoke testing is normal health check up to a build of an application before taking it to testing in depth.

SANITY TESTING:

• A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep.
• A sanity test is usually unscripted.
• A Sanity test is used to determine a small section of the application is still working after a minor change.
• Sanity testing is a cursory testing, it is performed whenever a cursory testing is sufficient to prove the application is functioning according to specifications. This level of testing is a subset of regression testing.
• Sanity testing is to verify whether requirements are met or not, checking all features breadth-first.

Hope these points will help you to clearly understand the Smoke and sanity tests and will help to remove any confusion.

Thanks to VijayD for answering this question in simple way for our readers.

If you have more points on smoke and sanity testing to elaborate on, please comment below.

This is the guest post from VijayD

Question:

What is the difference between client-server testing and web based testing and what are things that we need to test in such applications?

Ans:
Projects are broadly divided into two types of:

• 2 tier applications
• 3 tier applications

CLIENT / SERVER TESTING
This type of testing usually done for 2 tier applications (usually developed for LAN)
Here we will be having front-end and backend.

The application launched on front-end will be having forms and reports which will be monitoring and manipulating data

E.g: applications developed in VB, VC++, Core Java, C, C++, D2K, PowerBuilder etc.,
The backend for these applications would be MS Access, SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, Mysql, Quadbase

The tests performed on these types of applications would be
- User interface testing
- Manual support testing
- Functionality testing
- Compatibility testing & configuration testing
- Intersystem testing

WEB TESTING
This is done for 3 tier applications (developed for Internet / intranet / xtranet)
Here we will be having Browser, web server and DB server.

The applications accessible in browser would be developed in HTML, DHTML, XML, JavaScript etc. (We can monitor through these applications)

Applications for the web server would be developed in Java, ASP, JSP, VBScript, JavaScript, Perl, Cold Fusion, PHP etc. (All the manipulations are done on the web server with the help of these programs developed)

The DBserver would be having oracle, sql server, sybase, mysql etc. (All data is stored in the database available on the DB server)

The tests performed on these types of applications would be
- User interface testing
- Functionality testing
- Security testing
- Browser compatibility testing
- Load / stress testing
- Interoperability testing/intersystem testing
- Storage and data volume testing

A web-application is a three-tier application.
This has a browser (monitors data) [monitoring is done using html, dhtml, xml, javascript]-> webserver (manipulates data) [manipulations are done using programming languages or scripts like adv java, asp, jsp, vbscript, javascript, perl, coldfusion, php] -> database server (stores data) [data storage and retrieval is done using databases like oracle, sql server, sybase, mysql].

The types of tests, which can be applied on this type of applications, are:
1. User interface testing for validation & user friendliness
2. Functionality testing to validate behaviors, i/p, error handling, o/p, manipulations, services levels, order of functionality, links, content of web page & backend coverage’s
3. Security testing
4. Browser compatibility
5. Load / stress testing
6. Interoperability testing
7. Storage & data volume testing

A client-server application is a two tier application.
This has forms & reporting at front-end (monitoring & manipulations are done) [using vb, vc++, core java, c, c++, d2k, power builder etc.,] -> database server at the backend [data storage & retrieval) [using ms access, sql server, oracle, sybase, mysql, quadbase etc.,]

The tests performed on these applications would be
1. User interface testing
2. Manual support testing
3. Functionality testing
4. Compatibility testing
5. Intersystem testing
Some more points to clear the difference between client server, web and desktop applications:

Desktop application:
1. Application runs in single memory (Front end and Back end in one place)
2. Single user only

Client/Server application:
1. Application runs in two or more machines
2. Application is a menu-driven
3. Connected mode (connection exists always until logout)
4. Limited number of users
5. Less number of network issues when compared to web app.

Web application:
1. Application runs in two or more machines
2. URL-driven
3. Disconnected mode (state less)
4. Unlimited number of users
5. Many issues like hardware compatibility, browser compatibility, version compatibility, security issues, performance issues etc.

As per difference in both the applications come where, how to access the resources. In client server once connection is made it will be in state on connected, whereas in case of web testing http protocol is stateless, then there comes logic of cookies, which is not in client server.

For client server application users are well known, whereas for web application any user can login and access the content, he/she will use it as per his intentions.

So, there are always issues of security and compatibility for web application.

Over to you: On which application are you working? Desktop, client-server or web application? What is your experience while testing these applications?

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This article is the part software testing question and answer series. Here I will answer some reader’s questions asked to me in comments or using contact form. If you have queries on software testing, quality assurance or career in testing then you can ask me these questions in comment section below.

It’s not possible to address each and every question in detail as I observed the questions are on vast topics, for which detail answers will itself require a new article. I will answer such questions in brief here and will also write detail articles separately if required.

So let’s get some questions answered:

Naresh A. asks:

“My past experience was related to “Test Engineer”. Recently I am appointed as Test Lead in a product based company. Currently there is no Pre-established testing process. As a TL am meant to define a standard process for the entire testing flow and I will maintain certain documents for each product.
Can you help me out in establishing a process for testing, and make me know the entire responsibilities of TL and what documents I am supposed to prepare and maintain?”

As a team leader you are responsible for project planning, scheduling, communicating your project status to your manager and most important task of assigning and monitoring the project work. Your main responsibility is to build a team to achieve your project goals. You need to focus on handling the challenges in your project so that your team and project will grow and perform well.

As far as the standard testing process is considered, it’s depends on you – what procedure you want to establish. Yes some people might blame me for this point but I prefer to establish my own processes that work for me. I don’t stick to those old process definitions that are written and managed in some 90′s and most of which might not applicable nowadays.

Test lead is responsible for ensuring project plan changes are incorporated in test plan. You might write a test plan and test strategy (In some cases it might be written by senior test team member or even by project test manager) Ensure the work is going according to this test plan. Identify the risks and try to mitigate them. At the end of project testing life cycle ensure that all test objectives are accomplished and acceptance criteria is met.

More TL responsibilities includes: Test Case Review, Requirements Validation, Monitoring the execution of manual and automated test cases, Prepare test summary report and Communicate test status to seniors and prepare corresponding documents.

To know more on SQA processes read this article “SQA Processes- How to Test complete application“. Hope from this answer you will get good idea of testing processes and TL responsibilities.

Pavan Ankus asks:

“I am appearing for the QA positions in US. I would kindly request you to mail me the suitable challenging situations in manual testing and also since I don’t have domain knowledge in Insurance, finance and other financial domain experience I am finding hard to explain to the interviewer as an experienced person. In this regard I need your suitable answer as to how to face the interviewer?”

In every testing interview you will get this question: “Tell me any challenging situation you faced in your previous projects or Tell me any bug that you feel proud to find it?”

I think answers to these questions depend on your testing career. I know every one of you might have faced many challenging situations where exceptional thinking is required to solve such problems.

I will suggest to pick any such situation from you career and explain it in better way. At least it should sound challenging This will help you to face further questions from interviewer depending on your answer.

The broad challenges in manual testing are: How to ensure complete test coverage? Testing without an automation tool is itself a big challenge. You can also explain non-technical challenges in manual testing like managing the testing work in critical time (Llink to testing under time limit) i.e. completing testing before deadline and even worst case if the deadline itself is not feasible.

Explaining a challenging bug you found in your career can be also a good answer for this question. For example the bug that was difficult to find or reprove or having big impact on customer revenue etc.

Pavan you mentioned that you don’t have knowledge in banking and finance domain then how you expect from yourself to give answer on that? If you don’t have experience in banking and finance domain then do not put this as a skill in your resume just for the sake of matching your profile with employer requirements. If you really want to get into testing of BFSI (Banking, Financial services and Insurance) domain then first study this domain. Know the basic concepts in BFSI domain. See the resources I have listed on BFSI domain on our resource page. Keep in mind you can answer in detail about any question if you have worked on that.

Mitch asks:

“What is the best way to go about getting a pay rise? Is reporting and graphing bugs found compared to other team member a good idea?

Comparing the bug count with other team or team member is very bad idea to ask for pay rise. If you are working for the organization for long time then your employer know your value and importance in organization. There is no need to show how your bug count graph is higher than your counterparts.

So what is the best way to ask for good salary rise?
At the time of your performance appraisal you should be able to convince to your reviewer that how you worked hard for your organization, How you succeeded in managing difficult tasks and how you enhanced your skills to better match your current work profile. If you succeed in this negotiation then you will definitely get good pay rise.

Other factors considered while giving you pay rise:
Your relevant skills, Complexity of application you are working on, problem solving skill, total and relevant experience, education and certifications.
Ask your questions in below comment section.

Read the previous article on testing questions and answer part1.
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This post is in continuation with QTP interview questions series. Following questions will help for preparing interview as well as learning the QTP basics.

Quick Test Professional: Interview Questions and answers.

1. What are the features and benefits of Quick Test Pro(QTP)?

1. Key word driven testing
2. Suitable for both client server and web based application
3. VB script as the script language
4. Better error handling mechanism
5. Excellent data driven testing features

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