FAQs
- 101. What is Test Environment?
- The hardware and software environment in which tests will be run, and any other software with which the software under test interacts when under test including stubs and test drivers.
- 102. What is Test First Design?
- Test-first design is one of the mandatory practices of Extreme Programming (XP).It requires that programmers do not write any production code until they have first written a unit test.
- 103. What is Test Harness?
- A program or test tool used to execute a tests. Also known as a Test Driver.
- 104. What is Test Plan?
- A document describing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended testing activities. It identifies test items, the features to be tested, the testing tasks, who will do each task, and any risks requiring contingency planning.
- 105. What is Test Procedure?
- A document providing detailed instructions for the execution of one or more test cases.
- 106. What is Test Script?
- Commonly used to refer to the instructions for a particular test that will be carried out by an automated test tool.
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- 107. What is Test Specification?
- A document specifying the test approach for a software feature or combination or features and the inputs, predicted results and execution conditions for the associated tests.
- 108. What is Test Suite?
- A collection of tests used to validate the behavior of a product. The scope of a Test Suite varies from organization to organization. There may be several Test Suites for a particular product for example. In most cases however a Test Suite is a high level concept, grouping together hundreds or thousands of tests related by what they are intended to test.
- 109. What is Test Tools?
- Computer programs used in the testing of a system, a component of the system, or its documentation.
- 110. What is Thread Testing?
- A variation of top-down testing where the progressive integration of components follows the implementation of subsets of the requirements, as opposed to the integration of components by successively lower levels.
- 111. What is Top Down Testing?
- An approach to integration testing where the component at the top of the component hierarchy is tested first, with lower level components being simulated by stubs. Tested components are then used to test lower level components. The process is repeated until the lowest level components have been tested.
- 112. What is Total Quality Management?
- A company commitment to develop a process that achieves high quality product and customer satisfaction.
- 113. What is Traceability Matrix?
- A document showing the relationship between Test Requirements and Test Cases.
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- 114. What is Usability Testing?
- Testing the ease with which users can learn and use a product.
- 115. What is Use Case?
- The specification of tests that are conducted from the end-user perspective. Use cases tend to focus on operating software as an end-user would conduct their day-to-day activities.
- 116. What is Unit Testing?
- Testing of individual software components.
- 117. What is Validation?
- The process of evaluating software at the end of the software development process to ensure compliance with software requirements. The techniques for validation is testing, inspection and reviewing.
- 118. What is Verification?
- The process of determining whether of not the products of a given phase of the software development cycle meet the implementation steps and can be traced to the incoming objectives established during the previous phase. The techniques for verification are testing, inspection and reviewing.
- 119. What is White Box Testing?
- Testing based on an analysis of internal workings and structure of a piece of software. Includes techniques such as Branch Testing and Path Testing. Also known as Structural Testing and Glass Box Testing. Contrast with Black Box Testing.
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- 120. What is Workflow Testing?
- Scripted end-to-end testing which duplicates specific workflows which are expected to be utilized by the end-user.
- 121. What's the difference between load and stress testing ?
- One of the most common, but unfortunate misuse of terminology is treating “load testing” and “stress testing” as synonymous. The consequence of this ignorant semantic abuse is usually that the system is neither properly “load tested” nor subjected to a meaningful stress test.
Stress testing is subjecting a system to an unreasonable load while denying it the resources (e.g., RAM, disc, mips, interrupts, etc.) needed to process that load. The idea is to stress a system to the breaking point in order to find bugs that will make that break potentially harmful. The system is not expected to process the overload without adequate resources, but to behave (e.g., fail) in a decent manner (e.g., not corrupting or losing data). Bugs and failure modes discovered under stress testing may or may not be repaired depending on the application, the failure mode, consequences, etc. The load (incoming transaction stream) in stress testing is often deliberately distorted so as to force the system into resource depletion.
Load testing is subjecting a system to a statistically representative (usually) load. The two main reasons for using such loads is in support of software reliability testing and in performance testing. The term 'load testing' by itself is too vague and imprecise to warrant use. For example, do you mean representative load,' 'overload,' 'high load,' etc. In performance testing, load is varied from a minimum (zero) to the maximum level the system can sustain without running out of resources or having, transactions >suffer (application-specific) excessive delay.
A third use of the term is as a test whose objective is to determine the maximum sustainable load the system can handle. In this usage, 'load testing' is merely testing at the highest transaction arrival rate in performance testing.
- 122. What's the difference between QA and testing?
- QA is more a preventive thing, ensuring quality in the company and therefore the product rather than just testing the product for software bugs?
TESTING means 'quality control'
QUALITY CONTROL measures the quality of a product
QUALITY ASSURANCE measures the quality of processes used to create a quality product.
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- 123. What is the best tester to developer ratio?
- Reported tester: developer ratios range from 10:1 to 1:10. There's no simple answer. It depends on so many things, Amount of reused code, number and type of interfaces, platform, quality goals, etc.
It also can depend on the development model. The more specs, the less testers. The roles can play a big part also. Does QA own beta? Do you include process auditors or planning activities?
These figures can all vary very widely depending on how you define 'tester' and 'developer'. In some organizations, a 'tester' is anyone who happens to be testing software at the time -- such as their own. In other organizations, a 'tester' is only a member of an independent test group.
It is better to ask about the test labor content than it is to ask about the tester/developer ratio. The test labor content, across most applications is generally accepted as 50%, when people do honest accounting. For life-critical software, this can go up to 80%.
- 124. How can new Software QA processes be introduced in an existing organization?
- - A lot depends on the size of the organization and the risks involved. For large organizations with high-risk (in terms of lives or property) projects, serious management buy-in is required and a formalized QA process is necessary.
- Where the risk is lower, management and organizational buy-in and QA implementation may be a slower, step-at-a-time process. QA processes should be balanced with productivity so as to keep bureaucracy from getting out of hand.
- For small groups or projects, a more ad-hoc process may be appropriate, depending on the type of customers and projects. A lot will depend on team leads or managers, feedback to developers, and ensuring adequate communications among customers, managers, developers, and testers.
- In all cases the most value for effort will be in requirements management processes, with a goal of clear, complete, testable requirement specifications or expectations.
- 125. What are 5 common problems in the software development process?
- 1. poor requirements - if requirements are unclear, incomplete, too general, or not testable, there will be problems.
2. unrealistic schedule - if too much work is crammed in too little time, problems are inevitable.
3. inadequate testing - no one will know whether or not the program is any good until the customer complains or systems crash.
4. featuritis - requests to pile on new features after development is underway; extremely common.
5. miscommunication - if developers don't know what's needed or customer's have erroneous expectations, problems are guaranteed.
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