Good interview questions QA from Cem Kaner article: "Recruiting testers" December 1999

On this page you can find more than 400 different QA interview questions fromdifferent recourses.Some software testers interview question are very simple some are a little bit difficult.If you would like to check you technical knowledge or to see more interview questions and answers you can try online online quiz from this web site.
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1. What is software quality assurance?
2. What is the value of a testing group? How do you justify your work and budget?
3. What is the role of the test group vis-୶is documentation, tech support, and so forth?
4. How much interaction with users should testers have, and why?
5. How should you learn about problems discovered in the field, and what should you learn from those problems?
6. What are the roles of glass-box and black-box testing tools?
7. What issues come up in test automation, and how do you manage them?
8. What development model should programmers and the test group use?
9. How do you get programmers to build testability support into their code?
10. What is the role of a bug tracking system?
11. What are the key challenges of software testing?
12. Have you ever completely tested any part of a product? How?
13. Have you done exploratory or specification-driven testing?
14. Should every business test its software the same way?
15. Discuss the economics of automation and the role of metrics in testing.
16. Describe components of a typical test plan, such as tools for interactive products and for database products, as well as cause-and-effect graphs and data-flow diagrams.
17. When have you had to focus on data integrity?
18. What are some of the typical bugs you encountered in your last assignment?
19. How do you prioritize testing tasks within a project?
20. How do you develop a test plan and schedule? Describe bottom-up and top-down approaches.
21. When should you begin test planning?
22. When should you begin testing?
23. Do you know of metrics that help you estimate the size of the testing effort?
24. How do you scope out the size of the testing effort?
25. How many hours a week should a tester work?
26. How should your staff be managed? How about your overtime?
27. How do you estimate staff requirements?
28. What do you do (with the project tasks) when the schedule fails?
29. How do you handle conflict with programmers?
30. How do you know when the product is tested well enough?
31. What characteristics would you seek in a candidate for test-group manager?
32. What do you think the role of test-group manager should be? Relative to senior management?
Relative to other technical groups in the company? Relative to your staff?
33. How do your characteristics compare to the profile of the ideal manager that you just described?
34. How does your preferred work style work with the ideal test-manager role that you just described? What is different between the way you work and the role you described?
35. Who should you hire in a testing group and why?
36. What is the role of metrics in comparing staff performance in human resources management?
37. How do you estimate staff requirements?
38. What do you do (with the project staff) when the schedule fails?
39. Describe some staff conflicts you’ve handled.

Here are some interview questions you might be asked on a job interviewfor a testing opening: (sample from MU COSC 198 Software Testing by Dr. Corliss)

1. Why did you ever become involved in QA/software testing?
2. What is the software testing lifecycle and explain each of its phases?
3. What is the difference between testing and QA (Quality Assurance)?
4. What is Negative testing?
5. What was a problem you had in your previous assignment (testing if possible)? How did you resolve it?
6. What are two of your strengths that you will bring to our QA/testing team?
7. How would you define (QA) Quality Assurance?
8. What do you like most about Quality Assurance/Software Testing?
9. What do you like least about Quality Assurance/Testing?
10. What is the Waterfall Development Method and do you agree with all the steps?
11. What is the V-Model Development Method and do you agree with this model?
12. What is the Capability Maturity Model (CMM)? At what CMM level were the last few companies you worked?
13. What is a "Good Software Tester"?
14. Could you tell me two things you did in your previous assignment (QA/Testing related hopefully) that you are proud of?
15. List 5 words that best describe your strengths.
16. What are two of your weaknesses?
17. What methodologies have you used to develop test cases?
18. In an application currently in production, one module of code is being modified. Is it necessary to re- test the whole application or is it enough to just test functionality associated with that module?
19. Define each of the following and explain how each relates to the other: Unit, System, and Integration testing.
20. Define Verification and Validation. Explain the differences between the two.
21. Explain the differences between White-box, Gray-box, and Black-box testing.
22. How do you go about going into a new organization? How do you assimilate?
23. Define the following and explain their usefulness: Change Management, Configuration Management, Version Control, and Defect Tracking.
24. What is ISO 9000? Have you ever been in an ISO shop?
25. When are you done testing?
26. What is the difference between a test strategy and a test plan?
27. What is ISO 9003? Why is it important
28. What are ISO standards? Why are they important?
29. What is IEEE 829? (This standard is important for Software Test Documentation-Why?)
30. What is IEEE? Why is it important?
31. Do you support automated testing? Why?
32. We have a testing assignment that is time-driven. Do you think automated tests are the best solution?
33. What is your experience with change control? Our development team has only 10 members. Do you think managing change is such a big deal for us?
34. Are reusable test cases a big plus of automated testing and explain why.
35. Can you build a good audit trail using Compuware's QA Center products. Explain why.
36. How important is Change Management in today's computing environments?
37. Do you think tools are required for managing change. Explain and please list some tools/practices which can help you managing change.
38. We believe in ad-hoc software processes for projects. Do you agree with this? Please explain your answer.
39. When is a good time for system testing?
40. Are regression tests required or do you feel there is a better use for resources?
41. Our software designers use UML for modeling applications. Based on their use cases, we would like to plan a test strategy. Do you agree with this approach or would this mean more effort for the testers.
42. Tell me about a difficult time you had at work and how you worked through it.
43. Give me an example of something you tried at work but did not work out so you had to go at things another way.
44. How can one file compare future dated output files from a program which has change, against the baseline run which used current date for input. The client does not want to mask dates on the output files to allow compares. - Answer-Rerun baseline and future date input files same # of days as future dated run of program with change. Now run a file compare against the baseline future dated output and the changed programs' future dated output.

Questions to ask during an interview

1. What is the structure of the company?
2. Who is going to do the interview-possible background information of interviewer?
3. What kinds of assignments might I expect in the first six months of the job?
4. What do you like best about your company?
5. What is the employer's environment (platforms, tools, etc.)?
6. What are the employer's methods and processes used in software arena?
7. What is the employer's philosophy?
8. What is the project all about you are interviewing for-as much information as possible.
9. Any terminologies that the company may use.
10. What is the structure of the software testing team?
11. What are the responsibilities of the software testing team members?
12. How many computers are in the software testing lab?
13. What kinds of software testing tools are installed in the software testing lab?
14. What is the ratio between software developers and testers in the company?
15. What development and QA methodologies is the company using?
16. What are your growth projections for next year?
17. Have you cut your staff in the last three years?
18. Is this a new position or am I replacing someone?