General QA, software testing interview questions


If you are recruiter / employer select interview questions to assess software testers or QA in all of the following areas:
  • Motivation
  • Problem solving
  • Decision making
  • Technical knowledge
  • Time management
  • Multitasking
  • Leadership
  • Sincerity

    General interview questions for Software testers and QA professionals:
    1. What types of documents would you need for QA, QC, and Software Testing?
    2. What did you include in a test plan?
    3. Describe any bug you remember.
    4. What is the purpose of the software testing?
    5. What do you like (not like) in this job?
    6. What is QA (quality assurance)?
    7. What is the difference between QA and software testing?    Read the answer for this interview question   for software testers
    8. How do you scope, organize, and execute a test project?
    9. Why did you choose to be a software tester?
    10. What is the role of QA in a development project?
    11. What sort of manager would you like to work with?
    12. What is the role of QA in a company that produces software?
    13. Define quality for me as you understand it
    14. Describe to me the difference between validation and verification.
    15. Describe to me what you see as a process. Not a particular process, just the basics of having a process.
    16. Explain the different phases of the general V-model.
    17. Describe to me when you would consider employing a failure mode and effect analysis.
    18. Describe to me the Software Development Life Cycle as you would define it.
    19. What are the properties of a good requirement?
    20. What do you want to be doing in your career in five years?
    21. How do you differentiate the roles of Quality Assurance Manager and Project Manager?
    22. Tell me about any quality efforts you have overseen or implemented. Describe some of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
    23. How do you deal with environments that are hostile to quality change efforts?
    24. In general, how do you see automation fitting into the overall process of testing?
    25. How do you promote the concept of phase containment and defect prevention?
    26. If you come onboard, give me a general idea of what your first overall tasks will be as far as starting a quality effort.
    27. What kinds of software testing have you done?
    28. What the best work have you performed?
    29. What metrics do you think determine a tester’s progress in an organisation?
    30. Have you ever created a test plan?
    31. Describe ideal software testing environment.
    32. Have you ever written test cases or did you just execute those written by others?
    33. What did your base your test cases?
    34. Suppose a software has three inputs, each having a defined valid range. How many test cases will you need to test all the boundary values?
    35. How do you determine what to test?
    36. How do you decide when you have 'tested enough?'
    37. How do you test if you have minimal or no documentation about the product?
    38. Describe me to the basic elements you put in a defect report?
    39. Why would you like to work on this project?
    40. How do you perform regression testing of software?
    41. What knowledge do you think are important to be successful in software testing?
    42. At what stage of the life cycle does testing begin in your opinion?
    43. How do you analyze your test results? What metrics do you try to provide?
    44. Realising you won't be able to test everything - how do you decide what to test first?
    45. Where do you get your expected results?
    46. If automating - what is your process for determining what to automate and in what order?
    47. In the past, I have been asked to verbally start mapping out a test plan for a common situation, such as an ATM. The interviewer might say, "Just thinking out loud, if you were tasked to test an ATM, what items might you test plan include?" These type questions are not meant to be answered conclusively, but it is a good way for the interviewer to see how you approach the task.
    48. If you're given a program that will average student grades, what kinds of inputs would you use?
    49. Tell me about the best bug you ever found.
    50. How should the testing of a excel spreadsheet and an aircraft application differ?
    51. What made you pick software testing over another career?
    52. What is the exact difference between Integration & System testing, give me examples with your project.
    53. How did you go about software testing a project?
    54. When should software testing start in a project? Why?
    55. Name the reasons for executing tests in a separate test environment
    56. What are your most valuable lessons learned from the last Software Testing project that you was involved?
    57. How do you go about testing a web application?
    58. Difference between Black & White box software testing
    59. What is Configuration management? Tools used?
    60. How do you apply configuration management (CM) process in software testing?
      Answer:Configuration management
    61. What do you plan to become after say 2-5yrs (Ex: QA Manager, Why?)
    62. Would you like to work in a team or alone, why?
    63. How you handled a difficult situation with a coworker.
    64. Give me 5 strong & weak points of yours
    65. Why do you want to join our company?
    66. What was your background before testing?
    67. Why did you get involved in testing?
    68. When should software testing be stopped?
    69. How do you know when you've finished and can stop testing? How much is enough?
    70. Tell me about how you had to meet a very tight deadline.
    71. How to motivate a software tester?
    72. What sort of things would you put down in a bug report?
    73. Why is it important to assign both severity and priority levels to a defect?
    74. Who in the company is responsible for Quality?
    75. Who defines quality?
    76. What is an equivalence class?
    77. Is a "A fast database retrieval rate" a testable requirement?
    78. Should we test every possible combination/scenario for a program?
    79. What criteria do you use when determining when to automate a test or leave it manual?
    80. When do you start developing your automation tests?
    81. Discuss what test metrics you feel are important to publish an organization?
    82. Describe the role that QA plays in the software lifecycle.
    83. What should Development require of QA?
    84. What should QA require of Development?
    85. How would you define a "bug?"
    86. Give me an example of the best and worst experiences you've had with QA.
    87. How does unit testing play a role in the development / software lifecycle?
    88. Explain some techniques for developing software components with respect to testability.
    89. Describe a past experience with implementing a test harness in the development of software.
    90. Have you ever worked with QA in developing test tools? Explain the participation Development should have with QA in leveraging such test tools for QA use.
    91. Give me some examples of how you have participated in Integration Testing.
    92. How would you describe the involvement you have had with the bug-fix cycle between Development and QA?
    93. What is unit testing?
    94. Describe your personal software development process.
    95. Describe your solution to one of the most difficult testing problems you have faced.
    96. How do you know when your code has met specifications?
    97. How do you know your code has met specifications when there are no specifications?
    98. Describe your experiences with code analyzers.
    99. How do you feel about cyclomatic complexity?
    100. Who should test your code?
    101. How do you survive chaos?
    102. What processes/methodologies are you familiar with?
    103. What type of documents would you need for QA/QC/Software Testing?
    104. How can you use technology to solve problem?
    105. What type of metrics would you use?
    106. How to find that tools work well with your existing system?
    107. What automated tools are you familiar with?
    108. How well you work with a team?
    109. How would you ensure 100% coverage during software testing?
    110. How would you build a test team?
    111. What problem you have right now or in the past? How you solved it?
    112. What you will do during the first day of job?
    113. What would you like to do five years from now?
    114. Tell me about the worst boss you've ever had.
    115. Give some specific examples of creative solutions in your last testing project.
    116. What are your greatest weaknesses?
    117. What are your strengths?
    118. What is a successful product?
    119. What do you like about Windows?
    120. What is good code?
    121. Why shouldn’t a developer test her own programs?
    122. How do you deal with criticism?
    123. Who is Kent Beck, Dr Grace Hopper, Dennis Ritchie?
    124. What are basic, core, practises for a QA specialist?
    125. What do you like about QA?
    126. What has not worked well in your previous QA experience and what would you change?
    127. How does a programmer's testing differ from a QA department member's testing?
    128. How you will begin to improve the QA process?
    129. What is the difference between QA and QC?
    130. What is UML and how to use it for software testing?
    131. What is CMM and CMMI? What is the difference?
    132. What do you like about computers?
    133. Do you have a favourite QA book? More than one? Which ones? And why.
    134. Can you briefly explain the benefits you enjoyed as a result of reading this book?
    135. What is the responsibility of programmers vs QA?
    136. What are the properties of a good requirement?
    137. Ho to do test if we have minimal or no documentation about the product?
    138. What are all the basic elements in a defect report?
    139. Is an "A fast database retrieval rate" a testable requirement?
    140. Why should you care about objects and object-oriented testing?
    141. What does 100% statement coverage mean?
    142. How do you perform configuration management with typical revision control systems?
    143. What is code coverage?
    144. What types of code coverage do you know?
    145. What tools can be used for code coverage analysis?
    146. Is any graph is used for code coverage analysis?
    147. At what stage of the development cycle software errors are least costly to correct?
    148. What can you tell about the project if during testing you found 80 bugs in it?
    149. How to monitor test progress?
    150. Describe a few reasons that a bug might not be fixed.
    151. What are the possible states of software bug?s life cycle?
    152. What books about QA (software testing) did you read?
    153. What type of testing based specifically on a program code?
    154. What type of testing based on any document that describes the "structure of the software"?
    155. Please describe test design techniques like: state-transition diagrams, decision tables, activity diagrams.
    156. Describe business process testing and what test design technique would you use for it?
    157. Question: Please define the Scrum
      Answer: Iterative and incremental Agile Project Management framework.
    158. Question: What are the Primary Principles of Scrum?
      Answer: Commitment, Courage, Focus, Openness, Respect



    On this page I put some general Interview Questions for QA and software testers. These general Qa Interview Questions are very simple and mainly were used for interviewing software testers who is involved in all types of testing. The interview questions found above are listed in order of complexity. However all new QA interview questions (regardless of there difficulty) will be added to the bottom of the list. You can find more QA and software testing related Interview Questions searching the WEB. END QA Interview Questions.



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    © January 2006 Alex Samurin geocities.com/xtremetesting/ © 2009 eXtremeSoftwareTesting.com