Top 10 interview questions for QA Testers you must study!

Posted on December 14, 2022 at 11:42 AM

Do you know that Starbucks lost millions of dollars in sales in 2015 due to a problem with its daily system refresh? This malfunction resulted in the closure of point-of-sale registers in numerous locations across the US and Canada.

What happened to Starbucks in 2015 is a nightmare that no business wants to have. As a result, every business desires to find a competent QA tester to ensure their products and services are up to par before release.

India’s IT and software development companies are no exception, as they also need a QA tester to give the green light to their products.

In India, the QA Tester’s salary ranges from 2.0 lakh to 8.0 lakh, with an average annual salary of 4.2 lakh.

If you appear for a QA tester interview, learn these top 10 frequently asked QA tester interview questions!

What are the top 10 QA Tester interview questions?

It does not matter whether you already have some experience as a QA tester or are just a fresher trying your luck in an interview. Going through a few frequently asked QA tester interview questions is always helpful.

Here we have compiled the top 10 QA tester interview questions. Knowing the answers to these questions will help a candidate immensely.

1. How many phases are there in the quality assurance cycle? What are these phases?

Answer: There are 4 phases of the quality assurance cycle. These are as follows:

Plan

According to it, a business should establish a process and give proper attention to planning. It generally has to do with figuring out all of a business’s goals or objectives.

This is extremely important when it comes to delivering a high-quality product.

Do 

It specifies the importance of both process development and testing.

Check 

This phase entails monitoring the processes, modifying the concerned methods, and checking whether they meet the predetermined objectives.

Act 

It states that all actions related to implementation should be given special attention to achieve continuous improvements in the processes.

2. Can you differentiate quality assurance from software assurance?

Answer:

Quality assurance	Software testing
Quality assurance is a collection of activities to ensure that the developed software meets all user requirements.	Software testing is a post-development activity. It determines whether the actual results correspond to the expected results. It is done to ensure that the software is free of bugs. In a nutshell, software testing is the verification of the application under test.
It entails activities such as processes, procedures, and standard implementation.	It entails activities such as testing and verification.
It is process-oriented, which means it checks the processes to ensure that the client receives quality software.	It is product-oriented, i.e., testing software functionality.
Preventive activity type	Corrective activity type
The primary goal of quality assurance is to deliver high-quality software.	The primary goal of software testing is to identify bugs in the developed software.

3. What is monkey testing?

Answer:

1. Monkey testing is a type of black-box testing. To test the application, one uses monkey testing, which involves providing random inputs and observing the system’s behavior. As a result, one can determine whether or not it is crashing.
2. This testing is done automatically whenever the user provides random inputs to test the system’s behavior.
3. No test case is required to conduct monkey testing.
4. It can also be automated, meaning that one can create scripts or programs that randomly generate inputs to test the system’s functionality.
5. This technique is helpful when carrying out stress or load testing.

4. Differentiate between smart monkeys and dumb monkeys.

Answer:

Smart Monkeys	Dumb Monkeys
Monkeys who have a basic understanding of the application are smart monkeys.	Those who are unaware of the application are dumb monkeys.
They are aware of where an application’s pages will reroute.	An application’s redirection destination is unknown to them.
Additionally, they know the validity or otherwise of the inputs they provide.	They are also unaware of the application’s beginning and endpoints.
They are knowledgeable enough to report any errors they find as bugs.	They lack application knowledge, but they still discover bugs like hardware failures or environmental failures.
They are also familiar with the menus and buttons.	They have limited knowledge of an application’s UI and functionality.

5. What are the exit criteria, and how do you decide what they are?

Answer:

Theoretically, testing procedures for some products and cases might be extremely resource-intensive and impractical.

To have an effective QA process, one must determine when testing is complete.

One  then uses an exit criteria document, which outlines the requirements that must be satisfied before the product is released.

Exit criteria are specified during the test planning stage. These enable the test engineers and QA managers to develop an efficient and effective QA procedure. Such QA procedures follow the pre-established guidelines, guaranteeing that the developed system complies with the specifications and is delivered on schedule.

Test case coverage, the remaining issues’ priority and/or severity, feature coverage, deadlines, business requirements, etc., are all examples of exit criteria.

A succinct list of exit criteria could, for instance, be:

1. Every test case has been run.
2. 95% of tests are successful.
3. There are no longer any serious or high-priority problems.
4. User story modifications are always documented.

One can see from the example that the exit criteria must be rigorous yet reasonable. Expecting that every test will be passed with a perfect score every time may not be reasonable. However, one must ensure that there are no serious flaws that could cause the system to malfunction or prevent the user from using it as intended.

6. What constitutes a suitable format for a test case?

Answer:

The test case format consists of the following:

• Actual results
• Expected results
• Test case ID
• Test case description
• Build version
• Severity
• Priority
• Steps to execute
• Environment

7. What do “bug release” and “bug leakage” mean to you?

Answer:

Bug Leakage

A bug leakage happens when an end user finds a bug that should have been caught in earlier builds or versions of the application.

A bug that exists during testing but is not found by the QA tester and is later found by the end-user is referred to as a “bug leak.”

Bug Release

A “bug release” is a particular software version that has been made available with a known number of bugs or flaws.

These kinds of bugs frequently have low priorities and/or severity. This is done when the company can tolerate a bug in the released software rather than go through the time and expense of fixing it in that version.

These bugs are typically described in the release notes.

8. What is ad hoc testing?

Answer: 

Ad hoc testing is a non-formal approach to software testing. It does not adhere to established procedures such as test plans, test cases, requirement documents, etc.

Ad hoc testing has the following traits:

1. Ad hoc testing is done on an application after formal testing is finished.
2. Ad hoc testing’s main goal is to break the application without following any process.
3. The QA tester performing the ad-hoc testing should be well-versed in the product.

9. Can you think of any tools that would be useful to a QA tester when performing quality testing or inspection?

Answer:

OpenSTA, Yslow, FireBug, and Selenium are some of the best tools for this approach.

10. What is the distinction between a test plan and a test strategy?

Answer: 

The project manager creates the test strategy at a higher level, demonstrating the overall testing approach for the entire project.

On the other hand, the test plan depicts how testing should be carried out for a specific application within a project.

Conclusion

We hope you take note of these top 10 frequently asked QA tester questions and prepare well for your interview.

Cracking an interview is undoubtedly hard, but it is worth all your sweat!

You can also opt for a QA tester internship at Relinns Technologies. 

Relinns Technologies is a leading software development company that believes in producing only the best services and products. And to do that, we strive to groom our interns and employees to the tee.

Kindly visit our website, Relinns Technologies, to learn more about our internships!