Quality Assurance Interview Questions and Answers Quality Management

 There is a difference between the two terms and the roles of people working in these domains. Software testing is the activity that the project team performs to verify if the product is deliverable according to the client's standards. On the other hand, quality assurance is about planning and verifying the quality of the entire product development process, from requirement gathering to product delivery. Some of the key differences between the two are as follows:

 There are multiple stages in the entire software development process, and the two most significant ones are built and release. 

The build is about getting a software product ready for the testing stage. Developers send the product to the testers when they think it is ready according to the client's requirements. The testing team then checks it and decides if there are any flaws or if it is apt for delivery. It is not only when new software or a product gets developed. The build stage also comes through even when the developers have only added some feature to an existing product (a version upgrade) and want to send it for testing.

The release is the stage after testing when the team has approved the product for final delivery. The testing team use all sorts of processes and tools to ensure that the product meets the requirements set in the SRS and approves if they find no flaws. Interestingly, a product may go through multiple build phases before it goes for release, but there is only one release step.

The table indicates fundamental differences between the build and release phases. You can mention them while answering quality assurance interview questions related to these two phases.

Quality assurance is about finding the bugs and rectifying them on time to ensure that the end product meets the customer's requirements. Hence, the experts check the software for bugs during the testing or other phases and send it back to the developer for revision until a bug-free product is available. However, there are situations when the bugs get unnoticed. That is all about bug release and leakage.
Bug leakage is when the end user experiences a flaw in the software and reports it. These bugs go unnoticed in the quality assurance phases, and the leak happens after the delivery. Once the end user identifies the defects, it usually goes for bug removal or version upgrade. This situation can put the company's reputation under question as the end user gets the impression that experts did not do their work appropriately.
Bug Release is when the product is in the testing phase, and the test team identifies them and reports it to the development team. It is not an intense situation, as the bug identification is within the project team. It can get rectified before the delivery. The development team sends the product to the testing department. They check it to identify the bugs and send it back to them in case there is a scope for improvement.

 Quality assurance is an elaborate process that involves multiple activities. The project team inspects the requirements, assures the best use of resources, plans actions or procedures to develop the product, and audits the performance and final product delivery. All this happens through multiple activities that the quality assurance team opts for to get the best results. Let us discuss these activities in detail to help you find better answers to the quality analyst interview questions.

Plan of Action

The first and the most significant activity is to plan the process through which you can ensure quality. The concerned team designs a template based on the requirements and resource availability. They also identify the problems that might arise during the development or implementation process. It is this phase that decides the efficiency of other activities. Key takeaways of this activity are:

The fundamental idea behind ensuring the quality of the product or project under question.

Divide the QA tasks amongst the team members and decide the hierarchy that the team will follow.

Decide the tools or processes that the team will use during the audit and analysis phase and set standards that the product should meet for it to be fit for delivery.

Quality Audits

It is another activity performed during the quality assurance process under which the team audits the project to check for any flaws. They verify if the policies or procedures you opted for work efficiently to deliver desired products. Moreover, these audits also help ensure that the quality of the end product never gets compromised. The quality metrics that the QA teams audit under this activity is:

• Team Performance
• Budget
• Resource Availability
• Failure Rate
• Defect Frequency
• Project Analysis

Under this activity, the project team examines a particular step and identifies the amendments they can possibly make to improve its efficiency. They check the activities for adding value and deviating constraints and identify potential problems on time to rectify them before they create an issue. You can also call it fit analysis which is much like the testing process to ensure delivery of premium quality end product.

These are the three primary activities, and they get further divided to perform the quality assurance process. Anyone working as a quality engineer or analyst follows these activities to ensure desired product delivery.

Documentation is an essential part of quality assurance or any other technical process, for that matter! Having information in the document form with you will help track the tasks. Moreover, it will make the follow-ups easier. The documents that are essential in the QA process are as listed below.

Requirement Sheet

Quality assurance starts from gathering the user requirements and creating a document that the entire team can use for reference. This document is popularly known as SRS, a software requirement sheet having all the information about what the client seeks in the end product.

Test Metrics

This document includes quantitative measures to ensure that the testing process is of the utmost quality. These measures also assure the effectiveness of the testing process. 

Test Plan 

The process for testing an application must follow a plan of action that the project team decides. After analyzing everything, the project team comes up with a test plan that gets documented for the entire team to refer to and use while working on the project.

Test Cases

It is an elaborate document containing a set of steps and phases that the team will use or follow during the software testing. Test cases help ensure that each activity for the project process works well and is nearing a successful delivery. These test cases are of multiple types. Namely, logical, error, negative, functional, and more!

Traceability Matrix

This document has a table that maps the requirements of a user for the final product. It covers all test cases to ensure nothing gets missed while the testing process is on. Following this matrix table, the value of the software testing process can improve.

Test Scenario

It includes all the possible scenarios of a test case, whether positive or negative. Using them, the test team can determine where the project is heading and whether there is any need for amendments.

It is a table, more like a worksheet containing all the information about the test cases to be used during the development phase. This document is significant in the entire software development process as the developers can refer to it from top to bottom to check the requirements and provide the relevant product. At the same time, the testing team can use it bottom to up to verify if the product meets all the requirements given by the client.
It is the first step of every project as it is essential to get the requirement document for the entire team to refer to and follow. It is also popularly known as RTM (requirement traceability matrix. This document covers test cases for every condition. The process for using this document is simple; the test engineer curates this worksheet and hands it over to the test lead. The test lead goes to the repository to verify the presence of a test case for every condition and consolidates and prepares another RTM document at the end.
Every requirement converts into a test case based on resource availability and business needs. If a test case is unavailable, either the specific was initially missing, or the team missed writing a test case. So, you know there can be a potential bug in that part, and there is room for improvements to meet the client's requirements.
Note: You can mention that the traceability matrix includes a test case against each requirement and not all possible test cases that verify them.

The idea behind your interviewer asking this question is to understand how well-versed you are with the responsibilities and the challenges. Let us give you the apt answer to such QA engineer interview questions.
There are many significant responsibilities that the QA team must fulfil. They must ensure that the end product is bug-free, meets all the technical and business requirements of the client, and a lot more. Thus, they require a thorough understanding of the project, processes that can lead to successful delivery and clarity of scenarios that can go wrong. Some of the challenges the quality assurance team can face are listed below.
Change in Requirements
One of the most common scenarios is the client changing the requirements while the project is already in development phase. While it is possible for the client to change needs when you work under agile methodology, it puts pressure on the test team. They would have to redo the entire test case sheet to accommodate the slightest change in the code, which is like added work and effort.
Inadequate or ambiguous requirements
If the requirement sheet is not clear and crisp, it will be a challenge for the team. The ambiguity creates confusion, and the team will never be sure about designing the apt test cases. It happens because even the user does not have clarity about what they want, and they leave it entirely to the project team to sort and understand their vision.
Lack of Experience
An inexperienced person working on the test cases or the test process is another challenge the quality assurance team faces. A lack of specific domain knowledge will lead to flaws in the requirement-gathering sheet, which eventually goes to poor or inappropriate test cases. This way, the entire project goes for a toss.
Miscommunication in Team
For a project to turn successful, the entire team must work collaboratively. The developers and the testers need efficient communication to find and rectify the bugs, ensuring that the final product is what the user intends. Thus, miscommunication within the team is another challenge that can mess things up.
These are the fundamental challenges that experts working in the QA domain might face. Field Understanding, thorough professionalism, relevant experience, and better communication skills can help cope with them conveniently.

 As the name indicates, it is an elaborate document related to objectives, strategies, scheduling, estimation, and more. Everybody on the team can use this document as a reference to do their part of the job and validate the software product under test. It is a blueprint monitored and controlled by the test managers where they put the information about the defined process that the test team would follow.

There is multiple test plan type based on the part of the project. Some of the common types are:

1. Production test plan: This test plan finds its use in the development or manufacturing phase. It includes information about how to put the product into the assembly, ensure its fitness and verify its quality.
2. Regression test plan: this document is for the already released products. This test plan help determines that no feature has got added or no bugs got identified after the final product delivery. It also serves in a similar way in case of upgraded products or after a software update.
3. Compliance test plan: It is a prototype to ensure that the end product complies with the set standards. It assures the success of the project once no further improvements possible.
4. Acceptance test plan: This test plan is for the phase after the end product gets delivered to the client. The idea is to ensure that it works the way the user wants, confirming the project's success.

Creating a test plan

It is also a task that requires utmost dedication, knowledge and experience. The simple steps one must follow to create a test plan are as follows:

• Analyzing the product carefully
• Designing a strategy
• Define the objectives behind each test
• Elaborate on the criteria for a test
• Plan the resources
• Elaborate on the required test environment
• Schedule the process
• Get a budget and time estimation
• Decide the deliverability

These steps make it convenient to design a plan for the tests for any phase of the process.

A test case is a set of constraints or conditions a software tester uses to ensure that the application works according to the user's requirements. It typically contains test names, conditions, expected results, and other relevant information. All possible scenarios (both positive and negative) get considered while designing a test case so the test team can get the expected results by merely following them.

Designing test cases

Designing a test case is a one-time process, but you can use it throughout the product development phase. The process begins after the client share detailed requirements about the end product they expect. The test engineers start creating a document including test cases for the testing process. Once they are ready with the essential papers, they share them with the team lead for review. After it gets handed over to the test team, they do not check the requirement sheet and only keep these test cases as a reference. The basic test case template looks like this:

• Header Section: The section includes test case Id, name, status, version, pre-conditions, summary and other things except for the actual steps and the reviews.
• Body Section: The body of a test case includes the step number, the description related to it, the expected result and the actual outcome. The table looks something like the one here:

Footer Section: The footer only includes the information related to the reviews, like who reviewed it and when.

Once you know what a test case includes, it gets convenient to design one. After that, you can follow the step-by-step process listed below to get on for your project.

Step1: System Study

You need to understand the system well and get clarity about expectations of end-users from the end product. Refer to the requirement sheet and the resource availability and ensure that you know the system thoroughly to write test cases for it.

Step2: Identify test scenarios

The next step is to identify all the positive and negative scenarios that the team must come across during the process. Understanding will move you closer to bug fixing and getting the desired product.

Step3: Write relevant test cases

Based on this information, design the relevant test cases that the team can use to approve the product.

Step4: Review your test cases

Once you have the test cases with you, the next thing is to get them reviews by the test lead and get the feedback for them.

Step5: Work on the reviews

Use this feedback to upgrade your test cases and keep doing the same until you get a perfect test case document.

Step6: Approval

Get the final approval from the lead and circulate the test case to the entire team for reference.

Test cases are the documents that include the procedures you should use to ensure every user requirement gets met in the end product. Each requirement in the SRS turns into a test case which the project team uses in the testing phase. The testing team puts in a lot of effort to write these test cases following a step-by-step process that includes:

• Understanding the requirements and the product under question
• Analyzing the test environment and keeping the constraints in mind
• Getting the test cases reviewed by the test lead

However, a few test cases may yield better results than others. It happens due to the effectiveness of the strategies, and a few tricks that can work are listed below.

• Keep things Simple

Keep the document simple and ensure your tone is directive. You should ensure that the instructions are straightforward, as multiple team members will use this document. It might also happen that the person designing the test case never uses it. So, it is essential to write it in the most uncomplicated manner.

• Focus on End-User

Keep your end user as your primary focus as the test case eventually has to reach their level of satisfaction. It is wise to focus on the secondary requirements that your end user stated.

• Avoid Repetition

The most common mistake that test engineers make is repetition! They write multiple test cases that eventually give the same results. It is nothing but a waste of time and resources. So, it is advisable you avoid repetition of any sort.

• Cover it All

It is wise to cover every requirement the user puts in front of the test cases. Check the SRS thoroughly to ensure that there is no requirement that you may not have turned into a test case.

• Avoid Assumptions

Never assume the requirements or misinterpret things. It may turn your test cases futile. Thus, get clarity from the client and then work on designing the test cases to inch closer to successful project delivery.

These tricks work for everyone wanting to write the best test cases to ensure project success. 

Quality Assurance is an elaborate process to ensure that the final product meets all the user requirements. The process starts when the user shares the requirements with the project team. It continues till the product gets delivered and up for use.

Quality Control, on the other hand, is a strategic approach to validating the quality of the end product. It is more like a remedial technique wherein; the team intends to find flaws and rectify them until they believe no bug is left.

The table below gives interesting differences between Quality Assurance and Quality Control.

It is a testing practice that uses data stored in tabular or spreadsheet format. The scripts are available in readable data files rather than complex codes. It enables testers to carry out multiple tests for all the test data inputs in the table and expect results in the same table. It makes things uncomplicated and less time-consuming.

Example of data-driven testing

Assume that you must check the login system that has more than one input field for over 100 data sets. You can do it in multiple ways, like creating 100 scripts. Create one for each data set and run the test one by one for all of them. Secondly, you can manually change the test script values and run the test several times. However, data-driven testing can ease things for you. All you need to do is import the data from excel worksheets, fetch the information one by one and execute the script.

This way, you save yourself a lot of time and effort. Hence, it is wise to say that data-driven testing is a better approach in multiple ways. Let us discuss some of the advantages of this technique for better clarity.

Advantages of data-driven testing

• It enables you to design test scripts at an early development stage.
• You get rid of the redundancy or unnecessary duplication of the test scripts
• Less amount of code that uncomplicated things a lot.
• Provide application maintenance flexibility.

All the information required to get stored in the seamlessly managed text records that are easily accessible.

 Bug identification is a significant aspect of the software development cycle. The bugs often get identified by the testers or the end user, but who identifies them makes a big difference. Depending on who encountered the bug and at which level decides which attribute gets associated with it. The two attributes used to signify these bugs are severity and priority.

Severity is the impact a bug has on the development or operational phase of a component. The testing lead decides the severity or degree of the bug's impact after checking how it can affect the product functionalities and operations. Bug severity gets categorized into the following types:

Critical

It is the bug due to which the software has stopped working abruptly. Whether the tester has reached a level where he cannot execute any test operation or the user cannot use any product functionality. These bugs are critical as they need to get fixed immediately for the product to operate well.

Minor

It is a level where functionality is fine, but the desired standards do not get met. For example, the software operations are working fine, but the user interface needs a change. There is enough time to deal with these bugs, as there is no urgency.

Major

It is when some parts of a few functionalities are not up to the mark, but the software has not stopped working. It is a critical issue but not significant enough to be dealt with immediately.

Low

The valid yet harmless defects like spelling mistakes fall under the low severity category. You can fix them as and when without any urgency.

If you face a severe bug, it is urgent to fix it before it damages the product or earns a poor reputation for the organization. That is where the concept of priority comes into existence.

Priority defines how urgently or how soon you need to fix the bug. It can vary for different products, depending on the bug you identify. Hence, it is a subjective aspect, and it gets categorized as follows:

High

These bugs are urgent and need to get fixed on priority. High priority means the time you have for resolving them is low, and the designated team should act upon it at once.

Medium

The defects that have no direct impact on the business fall under the medium priority. The team need to fix them soon, but not as soon as the high-priority defects.

Low

These are the defects that are of the least priority. It means you can take as much time as you want to fix them as they do not cause any significant damage to the software or the user.

These are the bug priority categories, and a tester decides in which category the defect falls to find a solution for it. For better clarity, refer to the differences mentioned in the table below.

 These two testing types fall under performance testing and software testing. One is to check if the software or the product is working fine under various circumstances, while the other help verifies the reliability and stability factor of a system.

Load Testing falls under the performance testing category, where the system’s performance gets assessed under real-life circumstances. For example, the testers check how the software under question would behave under high network traffic and under real-life scenarios.

The table below states the fundamental differences between the two.

The life cycle is a journey, and so is the bug life cycle. It is the journey of a defect from getting identified to getting fixed at the end. The process following which an organization finds a flaw and rectifies it may vary. It varies for different projects as no two bugs are identical, and their rectifying procedures are also different.

Any bug detected by the team goes through a series of phases before it gets fixed. The process that the bug goes through includes the following steps.

1. New

It is when a bug gets identified during the testing phase or by the end user. This newly identified bug gets assigned the status NEW.

2. Assigned

It is the phase of bug identification by the tester and gets assigned as a task to an expert. The experts in the developer team with relevant experienced get the job.

3. Open

In the open phase, the bug gets opened, and the developers start working towards fixing them.

4. Fixed

Once the developer feels like he has found and fixed the issue, it travels to a fixed state and goes to the testing team again.

5.Re-Test

Once the testing team runs different software tests to verify whether the bug has got fixed or not, it is the re-test phase.

6. Verified/closed

If the tests run successfully, it gets verified that the bug doesn’t exist, and the task gets closed. However, if the tester needs more information, he can ask for it before closing the bug project.

7. Re-opened Phase

If even a few of the tests are unsuccessful, the testing team sends it back to the developer, and they reopen the bug to fix it. This process continues until the bug gets fixed and the product is good to go into the market again.

Every bug goes through this same phase before it gets fixed, and the system is good to use for the end user.

Software testing is an essential part of the development phase, and it has to be successful to ensure the efficiency of the software. The team designs the test plans they will run through to ensure the end product meets all user requirements. They make sure to do enough test runs to leave no stone unturned in verifying the efficiency of the software. Tips to ensure you have done enough tests.
Ensure that every requirement turns into a test case and you have a test run for every feature. If you miss out on any, it may lead to an unidentified bug.
Avoid falling into the kitchen trap! Do not focus on running multiple tests for the same feature. It may take up a lot of time, and the team may miss out on the crucial ones to save time. So, set priorities and focus on quality tests.
Keep your test budget and deadlines in mind while planning the tests and stick to them religiously.
Make sure you go through the list of potential bugs and scenarios that can go wrong and run a test to verify them before passing the software with a green tick.
The fundamental idea is to know what ‘enough’ is for a particular project and decide the test runs accordingly. An experienced tester would always know about it, and there are negligible chances of them messing with the testing part.

 Testing, like every other phase of the entire product development and delivery process, requires some elements to be successful. These elements have specific utilities in the software testing process, and all of them are super crucial. Two such elements are Stubs and Drivers. Let us dig deeper and discuss them in detail.

1. Stubs

These are the elements that developers design to use in place of the modules. They come in handy if the modules are unavailable or not designed during development stage. The stubs will have all the information about modules missing and often get used when the lower-level modules are unavailable.

Stubs get divided into four categories in the top-down approach of incremental. These are as listed below.

One that elaborates the trace message

Category that exhibits the parameter value

One that returns the consistent values which the module handles

Category that returns specific values of the parameters utilized by the testing components.

2. Drivers

These elements work like the stubs but have a bottom-up approach in the integration testing. They help when the specific module during the testing procedure is unavailable. Other than this, the drivers come in handy when there are two interdependent modules, out of which one is partially ready. Now, if you want to test the component that is ready, the drivers can help in place of the other module, which is only partially available.

For Example: assume that you have a website with multiple modules like login, the home page, product page and more. Now a few modules are ready while the others are not. However, each module is dependent on the other. So, if you want to test one module, say the homepage, the driver for the product page can help until the other one is ready. Some of the common differences between the drivers are the stubs listed below in the table.

It often happens that there is a large software suite, but you have no time left to check or test each module as thoroughly as you want. Even if you have your test cases ready, it might get challenging to put them all to the test for unavoidable reasons. In such cases, the right thing to do would be to prioritise the tasks. You can create a priority list rating the tests from highly significant to least important. It will solve time or budget constraints, and you can only run the most vital tests.
Moreover, you can also ask your client to share a list of priorities with you based on the tasks they consider significant to test. So, you can run a test for those, ensuring the features and functionalities that are vital for your client get tested thoroughly. Moreover, you can decide to deliver the software after selective testing and do the rest of the software testing afterwards. This way, you can save some time and ensure timely software delivery without compromising its quality. Furthermore, you can test the rest of the functionalities late during the process to ensure you even verify the lesser significant features.

software testing is to check and ensure that the software works as expected and matches all the requirements mentioned in the SRS. However, there can be invalid inputs or unexpected user behaviours. For example, what happens if somebody puts the wrong password or inputs the wrong values? The site has to notify it and only accept the inputs when they are valid. It comes under negative testing. It helps identify all the possible scenarios where the user puts invalid information without the website crashing.

There are different types of negative testing scenarios. These are:

• Checking the website response when the user doesn’t fill in the required data fields. The test run ensures that the website doesn’t move forward unless these fields get filled with valid inputs.
• Tests to ensure that the user puts in the allowed number of characters. You must have seen that the password requires a minimum of 8 letters. The website doesn’t move forward until you input the required number of letters in the columns.
• Test to confirm that the web session behaves in an expected manner. For example, if you need to log in before accessing a particular page, the test helps verify that nobody can move forward without proper login.
• The data you put needs to be reasonable. For example, you cannot put the number zero in the column that asks you to enter your age! It also gets confirmed through negative testing.

Basically, all these tests that execute to confirm and condemn all the negative inputs the user might put come under negative testing.

There are various categories in software testing based on the techniques used and the software under test. Some of the types are as listed below.

1. Unit Testing

As the name suggests, it is a technique that you use to test the smallest piece of code. The test experts isolate the logical code unit and check it individually. The test unit you isolate can be anything, from class or method to any line of the code. As the units are smaller, your test speed increases and you are able to run multiple tests in a shorter time span. Once every chunk of code verifies, the entire project either gets accepted or moves to another testing process.

2. Integration and Regression testing

Once the test team gets assurance that every unit you isolated is working fine, the technique they use is integration and regression testing. Integration tests get performed on the entire process rather than the individual units. On the other hand, the regression testing mechanism comes to play after every change in the software product. Whenever there is a change or an upgrade in the software system, the test team performs the regression test to confirm that everything goes well.

3. FunctionalTesting

This software testing mechanism assures that the functions or operations of the end product meet the requirements mentioned in the SRS. The test team performs a test for its functionality and verifies it only if the process completes successfully. It only focuses on checking the functions. There are no tests to check the user interface, database, APIs or other aspects associated with the software.

4.Smoke Testing

It is a quick and rapid regression test that gets performed only to confirm to the quality assurance team that they can continue with the further steps. The team gets notified if the deployed software shows any flaws or errors during the smoke testing. They follow these alerts and immediately plan to fix the flaws. If you follow a hierarchy, smoke testing comes right before functional testing.

5. Performance Testing

As the name suggests, this testing technique is to verify the performance of the software delivered. The team checks the speed, reliability, response time, usage of resources and other factors related to the end product performance. They need to ensure that the system responds on time and with the expected outputs to consider it flawless and proceed towards the end of the testing process.

These are the five categories in software testing, and other than this, you have load testing, stress testing, system testing and shakeout testing. One has to know every detail about all these options to understand which testing type would be apt for their goals.

Note: It is one of the most frequently asked QA engineer interview questions that almost every interviewer would ask. You would have to answer the question and back it with facts that prove your point.
There are many test metrics involved in the software testing process, including defect recognition, leakage, removal and re-test. Which test metric is significant for you to depend on your testing goals; it can be the bug finding rate or the efficiency at which the testing technique performs. To answer this question, you can say that test efficiency is the most vital metric.
The efficiency of any testing method is the most vital factor as it will decide whether the end product is ready as per the requirements or not. Moreover, if the test is inefficient, many errors may go unnoticed, and you may deliver a substandard product to the end user. It will not only affect their experience but will earn a poor reputation for your company. Hence, it is vital that the test technique you choose offers the best results and leave no bug unnoticed or unattended.
For some people, test cases can also be a significant metric as it ensures that every requirement gets verified through a test. If there is a missing test case, you may miss out on checking that particular functionality and approve the end product with the errors. Thus, it will affect the software quality and consume a lot of time as the user will identify the flaw and ask you to work on it again and fix the flaws.
Similarly, the significant test metric for a test engineer can vary for various reasons. Hence, an appropriate answer for this question would vary. It is based on the project you are working on and the primary objectives of the test.

The interviewers generally include this in test lead interview questions with an aim to figure out if the person is capable of handling the issues. They do want to know your technical call on this issue but also want to test your interpersonal skills. You should personalize your answer based on your personal ideas and thought process. However, you can refer to the sample answer below.d
Sample Answer: If I face a test issue, I will start by analyzing the error identified and re-run the tests I previously performed. If it still shows that the software is working fine, I may plan new tests with newer test cases to identify the flaw and its root cause. I will also keep the test environment in mind, and if the need persists, I will seek guidance from my supervisor.
Apart from this, I will also work on maintaining my calm and handling the situation without creating undue panic. I will ensure that I look into it as a challenge and solve it strategically rather than building anxieties that do nothing but affect my performance. Moreover, if there is a team I am working in, I would also ensure that everyone else looks into the situation based on facts and do all it takes to fix the issue.

During the testing process, the people involved generate documents and scripts that include every detail of the test process. You will find information about the inputs, expected results, requirements of the end user, test script, databases and other software details. This information is called testware and is also popularly known as a testing tool.
These documents are essential. It is a good practice because the entire team can use them. Anyone joining the project in the middle can refer to the testware and get a hold of the tasks before making a contribution. It might sound like a general software document, but it is entirely different. Factors that make it different are:
Testers develop this document only for a specific purpose.
The metrics in this document differ in quality and are focused on the end-user requirements.
So, in a nutshell, you can call it a document having all the prerequisites to perform the tests on the software under question. Additionally, it has the results or the responses recorded while performing the tests.

The software testing or QA domain has seen drastic changes in the last decade. Organizations are ditching the traditional waterfall model and opting for the agile methodology. The reason for the shift is obvious; it takes less time, offers better efficiency and gives results that are reliable. Moreover, over the period, enormous test tools got introduced into the market, each offering something better. Any test engineer would have to consider multiple factors to choose a tool that would be apt as per his requirements. So, the criteria that these experts can follow are as listed below.

1.  Ease of Use

The primary factor that you should keep in mind is the complexity involved in using the software. It should have a supportive user interface that a test engineer can use conveniently. Moreover, it should be easy to learn so that any engineer can adapt to it without wasting time.

2.  End-to-End Traceability

It should be convenient to trace back the tasks that happened in a test process until the point of checking. Moreover, traceability should be bi-directional as it will increase the project efficiency and confirms the end product quality.

3.  Real-Time Report

A tool is efficient and excellent for use only if it allows you to create real-time reports and provides current graphs on the dashboard. If the interactions depend on manual processes, there are chances of flaws, which will impact the end product quality. At the same time, if you get real-time reports, studying the test efficiency gets easier.

4.  Automation Support

Automation is essential and not only a choice in this fast-moving competitive market. Hence, you need software tools that automate multiple tasks and save time, money and resources. It can be related to capturing the test results or generating scripts or reports automatically that the team working on the testing tasks can use.

5.  Integration and Test Process

The integration between testing and delivery should be seamless to contribute to the business growth. Thus, choose the testing tool with the capability of getting integrated conveniently and working in sync with the other test tools in the entire process to get the best results.

Considering these factors and using them as the selection criteria, you can conveniently find the best testing tool to check and complete the software.

The quality analysis emphasizes maintaining quality at every step throughout the process. From gathering the client requirements to handling the final product, everything has to happen with perfection for it to qualify the QA standards. Let us talk about resource allocation. A quality analyst would ensure that everyone gets what they require to turn the project successful, but there is no wastage at the same time.
Hence, the right time to start the quality analysis is as early in the project as possible. Once you have the requirement sheet and have planned how you would want to proceed with the project, it is the right time to bring the quality analyst into the picture. They can start with resource allocation and ensure quality throughout the process for a successful and timely delivery. Moreover, there are plenty of benefits that you can enjoy if you bring them into action at an early stage in the process.
You wouldn’t have to face requirement mismatches as the analyst will ensure that the team works according to the SRS document.
There will be no resource wastage in the name of quality as the analyst ensures every project step gets as much as needed.
You can save yourself from revising things repeatedly due to the quality flaws as you can take care of it on the go!
Thus, after the plan is ready and you are about to begin execution, the time is right for a quality analyst to jump in and start doing his job!

As the name suggests, it is a strategic and systematic review process that helps evaluate the quality management system of an organization. There is an audit team that the company choose for periodic audits of varied departments. These people check every document and report generated to give details about the test process. The purpose of these audits is to verify if the organization has a defined quality monitoring system and if its teams are complying with those terms. It is essential and highly fruitful to conduct these audits because:

• It helps confirm if the quality of the product meets the requirements that the end users have given.
• Audits help gather proofs that the team has worked on removing or eliminating the problem areas.
• It helps verify if the product is fit for use and can get launched into the market or delivered to the end user.
• One can identify the flaws in the final product or processes through the audit and identify the areas that need improvement.
• It opens the way for taking corrective actions and fixing the deficiencies to provide an improved product.

There are multiple other advantages due to which every business plans regular audits and gains an excellent market reputation.

How are audits get conducted?
There are multiple types of audits, broadly categorized are:

1. Process Audit
2. Product Audit
3. System Audit

You can choose the audit category and initiate the process, depending on the business domain or the aspect you want to check. At first, the members in authority choose a penal of qualified experts from varied professions to create an audit team. They consider the educational background, work experience and career achievements of the professionals before putting them into a team. Moving on, these teams plan periodic audits for different departments.
These audits can be impromptu, with the concerned team having no clue about the penal visit. However, it can also be planned or fixed on the work calendar. The team visit the department, asking them for their reports and other essential documents. What they look for is:
•Whether the final reports match the documents that have actual stats.
•If the team has met all the quality standards the project manager has set or there is a mismatch.
•Whether all the reports from varied departments are in sync or one contradicts the reports submitted by the other.
The fundamental thing that audits check is that the quality standards get maintained throughout the product development phase. The audit panel submit the report of their analysis to the concerned team, and they take necessary actions if required.

CRUD is short for creating, reading, updating, and deleting. These are the four basic operations you perform on data in the persistent storage application. Here, persistent storage refers to the data storage devices that keep the data safe and store it even when the device gets powered off. An example of such device can be a hard disk that is unlike the random access memory that erases all the data stored on it once the system turns off.

CRUD testing is under the black box testing technique that validates the software product functionality. As CRUD is all about databases, this test application is for SQL and other databases. There is enormous data in an organization. For instance, consider a simple employee database table. The data tables get updated every time someone joins the organization or leaves it. Similarly, if the employee moves to another department or gets promoted, the database tables go through upgradation. The testing technique here checks that the data stored complies with authentic values!

Let us discuss the steps a test engineer follows while performing the CRUD test.

Step 1: Know what to test

The first step is to identify the things, or the database tables you need to test through this technique. It is essential that you know the applications you will be testing, as it will help you create the strategies that would work aptly on them.

Step 2: Create a Plan

The next step is to create a plan to test the application thoroughly. There are multiple strategies that are apt for the application under question. So, it is a task to figure out which plan of action you want to choose.

Step 3: Write Test Cases

Once you decide on the plan or strategies and the application is in the testing process, the next significant step is to write test cases. Make sure you have a test case for each element of an application so that everything gets checked thoroughly. This document works as a reference during the entire testing process as it shows what you want!

Step 4: Execution

The last step is to execute all the plans or strategies you decided to complete the test process. If the execution is successful, so will your test process. Test execution only needs to be done by proficient experts as the reports they generate speak about the success.

In these simple steps, the test engineer can perform CRUD testing. It is reliable and highly efficient enough for the organization to trust them.

When you turn all the steps of manual testing into automated tasks, you jump into automated testing. It includes generating the test cases, executing different tests and generating reports at the end of the test procedure. It is important to note that automation testing is not a replacement for a manual one. Automation is only for reducing the human effort from a few manual testing steps to save time and effort.

The tasks that automating testing can perform are impossible with the manual option. Moreover, with automated reports, you can go back to the playback and carry out the same tests repeatedly to confirm report authenticity. That is the primary reason test experts opt for automation over manual testing. Let us discuss some of the benefits of this testing technique to explain further why it is better.

Advantages of automation testing

• Every time there is a change, and the source code gets updated, the tests may have to run again to authenticate the change. Unlike the manual test options, the automated ones can get generated and run over again without much effort. You can save the time that goes into writing test cases and other steps involved in the manual process.
• Another advantage of automation testing is that you save a lot of resources in terms of time, money and human efforts. Even if you repeat the tests several times, it wouldn’t cost you the same every time.
• The web applications with millions of database records are impossible to test for manual testing. Thus, automation testing comes to the rescue here, as it can test multiple records with just a few clicks.
• The feature that automation tests offer, like running the tests automatically whenever required, come as a savour for developers and testers. It allows them to work in sync and fix the flaws speedily.
• There are countless benefits of automation testing that make it the best choice for test engineers. It is also fruitful for the organization as it allows the project deliveries to be on time.

A test strategy is a document that a project manager curate to define the testing objectives. They go through the requirement specification documents and jot all the needs into one report, calling it a test strategy. The strategy shared by the project manager with the team is not the final one! It is static in nature, which means it keeps changing and updating frequently.

This document includes set standards one needs to follow during the testing procedure. Sometimes, a few teams keep the test strategy and approach in the test plan. On the other hand, many keep it as a separate document.

Components of a test strategy

1. The objective of the test

The most fundamental thing you will find in a test strategy is its objective. Why do you have to conduct the tests, and what do you expect out of them? These objectives are the customer requirements written in the requirement sheet, which the manager turns into the goals.

2. Issues with Business

The manager has to provide you with the issues in a business or the flaw which made the client want to go for the new software product. Thus, the test strategy document often has details about the issues with the business, whether operational or financial.

3. Roles of Test Team

Managers also mention the roles and responsibilities of each team member in the test strategy document to avoid confusion. Anyone looking at the sheet would know their responsibilities, and they can start taking up the test project.

4. Standards to follow

If there are any test standards, the team must follow during the process, all the details about them will be available in this document. There will be thorough clarity about these standards and how to follow them if there are any tools and techniques that you need to follow.

5. Tools and test automation

The project manager may also mention the test strategies or tools that the team should follow. Though the test team has all the power to suggest otherwise, these details are always a significant part of a test strategy.

6. Risks Involved

Another aspect listed in the test strategy document is the risks involved. Every test environment and test plan has certain risk factors involved, and you will find the ones associated with your project in this document. 

7. Changing metrics

As mentioned earlier, this document is static, and the requirements keep changing frequently. So, the manager will keep updating this document with all the changing metrics. So, another significant element is the change or the upgrades.

These are the fundamental components, but they may vary for different organizations. They may elaborate on a few steps and categorize them further, but the basic idea remains the same.

Like other tasks, testing has to follow a priority list to ensure everything happens in a set hierarchy. It has to start with finding the objective of the test process and end with the execution summary or report. Moreover, every task in between also has to follow a priority list so that the results are as expected. If we have to list the testing tasks based on the priorities, the list should go as follows:

• Prepare a test plan based on the project scope and objectives. Refer to the requirement sheet that client shared and consider the resource availability to plan the strategy to ensure a successful test process.
• Make sure you cover all the major and minor functionalities with the data you need for the testing process.
• Assigning roles and responsibilities to the test team members, considering their abilities and the tasks to be completed. It is a crucial aspect of planning the process as it determines success.
• The next priority is to execute the test based on the plans you created in the first step and ensure everything happens in a similar way. It is essential to follow the standards set by the project manager to move toward success.
• When the project is in the execution phase, you should also focus on defect reporting and keep track of the progress. If required, create reports for your reference or for someone working with you on the test process.
• Once all the tests are complete, you can proceed to create the test summary reports and submit them to the concerned teams.
• It is the priority list, top to bottom, which a test engineer should follow to ensure everything happens as desired and you get the required results. You can add a few steps based on the project you are working on and fit them into your priority list, but the basic idea remains the same.

This testing technique is about checking the level of strength that the product has. It tests the point of failure of the product under different loads. The test engineers will check the robustness, toughness, efficiency and other strengths-based elements of a software product to identify the points at which it might break and lose on these levels.
Destructive testing is essential and contributes a lot to ensure the efficiency of the product. You would know the potential points of failure for the end product, and if you think it would be unacceptable to the end user, you can start working towards fixing it. Not having these details can lead to repeated changes that waste your time and resources.
Negative testing, on the other hand, is the process that verifies that the product doesn’t fail if it gets an unexpected input. That is why it is also known as failure testing or error path testing. The purpose behind this testing technique is to strengthen its reliability factor and see how it reacts to invalid inputs. For example, how the system responds if someone puts eight characters in the required column instead of the required ten.  
Though the idea of destructive and negative testing is to add perfection to the end product, their objectives are different. One tests the points or values that can break the system, while the other tests how the system responds to negative or invalid inputs.

If you do not know how to proceed or where to stop, the test phase can turn into an unending process! During the first run, you will find multiple bugs or flaws to fix, but as you move on, the bug count will keep reducing. It is all well, and you can continue to run the tests until you find the bugs. However, confusion arises when you do not identify any flaw! A question will start haunting you about whether you should stop or keep running the tests for a few more cycles to be sure.

Interestingly, even the best test experts fall into this confusion more often, and you may find it challenging to decide when to stop testing. Factually, there is no right time to stop, as it is impossible to tell when your system will not have any more bugs. It may pass through all the test runs. However, as your end-user starts using it, they might experience a few more, and you may have to re-run the tests! So, you need to follow the criteria to decide when to stop testing and make it a part of your test plan. A few things you can put in the testing criterion are:

• Make sure the product fully meets the end-user requirements and nothing is left from the SRS document.
• Run the tests until you find no bugs in the system before handing it to the client for use. It at least ensures that a flawless system gets delivered.
• If you know of any potential bugs that might arise, you should at least make sure that they are easy to work around and fix.
• Consider your test coverage rate and ensure you achieve 95% of coverage.
• There is no point in running the re-tests if you miss the delivery date. So, keep the delivery date in mind, and you can stop before that.

On similar grounds, you can create criteria of your own that you would follow to decide when to stop testing. Make sure you brainstorm the idea with the entire test team and keep customer satisfaction and product quality as the priority.

Triage is a French term that means to separate, select and sort. In the testing domain, this term defines the priority and severity of the bugs found in a project. It is the most suitable for projects where you find multiple bugs in huge volumes. A lead or the project manager in the QA domain organizes a bug triage meeting to sort the bugs into varied categories and decide which one would get solved on priority. How often the leads conduct these meetings depends on the project situation. o

Bug triaging steps involve the following things:

• Check the bug description given by the test engineer to verify if it is enough for the developers to understand the flaw. If this information is not enough, it goes back to the test team, and they get asked to give a better and more detailed description.
• Check if the bug gets categorized in the apt project module and segregated under the least or the top priority index. This clarity is significant as the developer needs to understand what they should solve first.
• The test leads check to ensure that the bug is not duplicated and has a unique place in the module in which it is mentioned. Furthermore, they are also right about the appropriate keyword to bug.
• They assign bugs to the team members who they feel should handle them. They do so by either mentioning the expert's name in front of the bug or placing their names in the cc.

These are the basic guidelines of bug triage and the process that test leads follow during triaging. After every meeting, triage reports get generated to keep track of what happened during the triaging process. Moreover, bugs keep arriving during a process, so these meetings are recurring, and so is the report generation. 

Quality analysis is about verifying that the product quality is apt and fair to deliver to the end user. Hence, the fundamental skill that a test engineer should have is analytical thinking. Furthermore, the bugs or inefficiencies need to get sorted to improve the quality and get the expected functionalities in the final product. Thus, another skill that the quality analyst should possess is problem-solving. Thus, the list of skills that a quality analyst should have been:

1.  Problem-solving

A lot of excellence and understanding are essential in identifying the problems, and you would need equal efforts to find solutions for them. Only an expert understands the process and has the patience to deal with the issues and find a way out. Hence, it is essential that the expert has problem-solving skills. 

2.  Analytical thinking

The analysis is part of the job, as the title also says, quality analyst! So, the person taking up the job need to excel at analysis work and come up with fact and figures based on which one can make significant decisions. They must know the analytical tools that support their skill and give a technical touch to it.

3.  Communication 

A test lead has to communicate within the team and all the members associated with the process. If their communication skills are appropriate, they can send the message across without goofing up, and it will keep things in sync. Moreover, they will also know how to be stern yet respectful, giving the right messages to the people working at different levels.

4.  Team Management

Coming to the team management aspect, the leads have to be skilled in managing human resources. They should have an understanding of people and their thought processes. Moreover, they should have the skills to make the team feel supportive, determined and motivated to work together and achieve big goals.

These are the fundamental skill requirements that a quality analyst would require. Now, as the interviewer has asked how you can support the fact that you have them, you have to give an answer based on your experiences. You can talk about your role in the previous organization and share some challenges you faced and how you resolved them. Moreover, you can also talk about a life event where you had to make tough decisions and the path you decided on work in your favour. Keep this answer truly natural and based on facts. Ensure you do not overdo it or flaunt yourself, as the interviewer would get that!

No matter which job role you have applied for, the interviewer would ask you why you think you are apt for the job. The most common words you would hear are, why should we hire you?

Most candidates still find it hard to answer this question because you don’t really know what the interviewer wants to hear. However, answering it briefly by simply giving an overview of your personal and professional skills would increase your chances of getting hired.

You need to talk about your technical skills and mention how it complies with what the job role requires. Additionally, you can talk about your previous work experience, telling the interviewer that you have hands-on industry experience. Mention that you can adjust well in any business environment. Furthermore, mention that you know how to handle strict deadlines and stay motivated at work. In a nutshell, the highlights of your answer should be:

• Talk about your educational qualifications if it is relevant to the domain or the job role for which you have applied.
• Mention the additional certifications or the add-on courses you have done in a similar field. You can also talk about the analytic tools and techniques you are familiar with to convince the interviewer to hire you immediately.
• Mention the projects you have handled or worked on before. Give details about tasks you performed and explain how that experience can help the current organization.
• You can also talk about your personality traits but make sure you explain and not brag. Support your answer with a real-life situation or an experience you have had before.
• Make sure you show your willingness to adapt to the company culture. Furthermore, mention that you will give your best to ensure that you achieve your targets and be an asset to the organization.
• This answer is personalized, so use the information above as a reference and say things related to your personality.

It is a black box testing technique that provides a graphical illustration of an outcome and all the factors that led to it. The graph typically includes multiple causes, one after the other, leading to the result you have received. The diagram looks like this:

Diagram

There are certain circumstances where the test engineer or anyone working on the product development process needs to know the causes. That is where they use this testing technique. Some of the circumstances are:

• To find the precise reasons for a specific problem or the outcome you have received.
• To understand the relation of the interactions between two systems to infer how the organization can use it.
• Another situation where the cause-effect graph can help identify the problem so that you can create a plan of action to solve it on time.

If you are in any of these situations, you can take resort to the cause-effect graph and work towards improving the system responses. It is an easy-to-understand graphical illustration for which you do not require any training or technical knowledge.

Steps to using a cause-effect graph

As mentioned earlier, it is an easy-to-use graph that you can start using with just a few steps.

Step 1: Define the effect and identify it.

Step 2: Fill in the effect box and create the spine of the graph.

Step 3: Find out the causes contributing to the effect under question.

Step 4: For every box or branch, you should identify the factors which may have led to causing that effect.

Step 5: Level the causes and categorize them based on the relative reasons for the cause.

With these simple five steps, you can start using the cause-effect graph and see how it can support your business growth.

Verify and assert are the commands used in the test suites for adding validations to your test technique. In assert, the test process stops when the validation fails, and the process gets mentioned as a failed one. On the other hand, in verification, the test process continues even after the assert statement fails.
1. Assert Command
When you use an assert command during a test process, the test continues only when the condition turns true. As soon as the returning statement is false, the execution stops, and the process will not proceed further.
Example:

public void assertionTest(){
   //Assertion Passing
   Assert.assertTrue(1+2 == 3);
   System. out.println("Passing 1");
   //Assertion failing
   Assert.fail("Failing second assertion");
   System.out.println("Failing 2");
}

The output of this code is that the test stops after the second assert, as the code returns a failed assertion.
2. Verify Command
There can be situations where you want the test process to continue even after the assertion statement has failed. The verify commands will help in such environments. So, once you give the verify command, your test process will continue whether the return is false or true. It is an apt command when the situations are not that critical, and you can proceed even with a false assertion.
Example:

public void softAssertionTest(){
   //Creating softAssert object
   SoftAssert softAssert = new SoftAssert();
   //Assertion failing
   softAssert.fail("Failing first assertion");
   System.out.println("Failing 1");
   //Assertion failing
   softAssert.fail("Failing second assertion");
   System.out.println("Failing 2");
   //Collates the assertion results and marks test as pass or fail
   softAssert.assertAll();
}

The output of this code is a continued test process evens after all the failing assertions. The two codes clearly indicate that even when both test processes have failed responses, the one with verify command doesn’t stop abruptly.

Yes. Though automation testing is a thing and used more these days, the manual has not lost its charm completely. It still gets used by many test engineers in varied test environments because of its pros despite a few cons, like it is time-consuming and requires a lot of resources. Some of the advantages of manual testing are listed below.

1. No Environment Limitations

Unlike the automation test technique, manual testing has no environmental limitation. For example, UFT/QTP doesn’t support Linux operating systems, and Selenium doesn’t work on desktop applications. On the other hand, manual work for every environment.

2. Easy to Perform

You do not require the programming knowledge or technical skills to perform manual testing. So, it is an easy-to-perform test, and you can start performing the tests the moment you want.

3. Apt for any GUI

If the graphical user interface of your application keeps changing, automation testing is not an appropriate option. Opt for the manual testing technique, as it works well in changing environments.

4. Human Perspective

Human observation of the test environment enables professionals to see the defects through. They can find the potential bugs and start preparing to fix them before it causes issues.

5. Testable System

Manual testing helps test engineers detect bugs that can cause an application to become untestable. It is because the automated tests cannot test the system of which they are a part of.

These are the advantages of manual testing, making the test engineer use it in various scenarios. They use it to check and verify the features ad functionalities that automation testing cannot. Where to use this test technique depends totally on the engineer.

Automation testing is an essential part of the test procedure, using which we can expedite the software validation. However, there are challenges that a test engineer can face while applying test automation to the project. If the engineer doesn’t know the apt way to deal with these challenges, it might affect the test results and complicate the process further. Let us discuss a few challenges that might occur.
1. Team communication and collaboration
Communication is essential in all test techniques; it is crucial in automation testing. The entire team is a part of the automation, as they need to communicate through information and database reports to find the automation targets and objectives. Additionally, the team needs to be on the same page to keep the purposes clear and convey the goals unambiguously.
2. Selection of Tools
It has become a crucial and the most challenging task in the current times as there are multiple tools available in the market. From personal to commercial tools like Selenium and TestComplete you will get endless choices. Thus, it is challenging for the team to decide which tool would be appropriate. It would require a lot of analysis and a comprehensive understanding of the tool features for an engineer to determine which one would be apt.
3. Test Approach selection
Selecting the right tools to create the scripts is not enough. However, you have to follow the right test approach to ensure successful execution. To choose the right option, they need answers to questions like which one would reduce human effort and provide reliable results. So, it is apt to check how the approach works and if it will help you achieve your automation targets.
4. Upfront investment
Though it is an agile and fruitful test methodology, the budget can sometimes be a constraint. The initial phases of the automation test process are a little more expensive than their counterparts. There are license costs involved, along with operational expenses and software costs. All these increase the upfront investment cost, but you can decrease it by improving your analysis skills.  
These are the challenges a test engineer face during the automation testing procedure. The right way to deal with these challenges is to put your expertise to work and keep patience. Your work experience will also be a contributing factor. The more projects you handle, the better your ability to deal with these challenges.

Quality analysis is crucial throughout the software development process. Hence, if there are any development-related issues, one should better solve them on time to avoid compromising product quality. The problem can be as generic as not keeping track of the timelines and rushing to complete the project in the last few days. It will not only lead to poor or sub-standard product delivery but will also earn a bad reputation for your business. Let us discuss some of the software development problems and the solutions to them.
1. Confused Requirements
The most common of all the issues is unclear requirements. It often happens when either the client doesn’t have clarity about requirements or the engineer creating the SRS document has not done the apt job. The solution to this issue is to select an expert who can understand what the user wants and see through his words and intentions to write a software requirement document.
2. Unrealistic Timelines
Another issue one can face during the software development cycle is setting unrealistic timelines. Once the tasks get defined, the project manager decides how much time each task will take and fix an expected delivery date. If the deadline set by the manager is unrealistic, the delay is inevitable. Thus, the apt solution is for the project manager to set realistic timelines only after discussing the feasibilities with the team.
3. Inadequate Testing
Handing the project to the end user without performing enough tests is another issue the product development team can face. As you have not verified the product quality, you can never be sure if the end user will like it or not. If the end user complains about the bugs, you would have to do the code upgrade and testing all over again. Thus, it is apt to run enough tests and deliver the product only when you are sure.
4. Feasibility Mismatch
Not checking whether the requirements are feasible and turning them into the product objectives is a mistake! When the development team rejects them at a later stage, it will get challenging to convey them to the client. Thus, before creating a project plan, ensure that you study the feasibility factor of every need mentioned in the requirements sheet.
5. Lack of communication
Communication is also a challenge when there are plethoras of experts working on a project. If any of them gets inappropriate information, everything will get chaotic! Hence, it is advisable that you keep the communication network smooth and direct to avoid this issue.
These are the five problems that the team can face during the software development phase. We have mentioned the solutions alongwith each issue that the team can use to ensure fair and targeted software development.

Software quality analysis is an elaborate process which goes through multiple stages. It covers software requirements, system documentation, source code building and more. All these phases have documents that store information about the tasks performed and the outputs obtained. These documents are essential because anyone working on the project can refer to them for better clarity, and they also come in handy while conducting audits.
List of documents involved in software quality analysis process.
1. Product Document
It has all the information about the product you will be developing in the process. There will be all kinds of requirements in this document that the team has to fulfil alongwith the standards you need to meet.
2. Process Document
Another document that you will get is the process report. It will have information about the processes or the strategies you will follow to reach the end product. From tools to techniques, everything will get mentioned in this document.
3. System Document
This document has information about the source code, design decisions taken to generate the system and a description of the architecture. Some companies keep the help guides in the system document, while others move it to the user document.o
4. User Document
This document is essential for the end users to help them understand the product and its use. It is basically the user manual that has all the necessary details about how to use the product and if you have to follow any precautions.
These are the documents included in the quality analysis process. Anyone working on the project will generate, maintain and use these documents till the end of the process.

MR in quality analysis refers to modification requests. As the name clearly suggests, it is the request that the end user puts in for modifying the existing system. It is the responsibility of a developer and the test team that they understand this requirement and bring the necessary changes to the current system, creating a newer and upgraded version of it.
These requests often arise when the end user wants to make an upgrade and wants an additional feature in the existing system. It can get challenging if the request made by the client is not feasible or if it is not sufficiently explicated. Thus, it is advisable that the test or development teams take detailed information from the client and discuss the feasibility before starting the modification process.

Logically, the application development cannot start and get tested if you do not have clarity about the requirements. However, you would have to start, considering that the needs are not fixed and will keep changing during the course of development. The two methods you can adopt to test the document without the requirements getting freezed are listed below.
Method1
Start working with the requirements you already have and build the product your end user requires. Keep scope and time for the upgrades and changes your client might come up with during the course of the project development. The idea is to consider the document you have as the final one until you get changes from the client.
Method2
If it is a request for a software upgrade, you can use the current version as the reference to test and release the upgraded product. Keep your previous interactions with the client in mind and try to infer how often he can change the requirements and how intense they can get. The idea is to use your experience with the client and the product to develop and test the new product under question.
These two are simple yet effective methods that test engineers in the current times can use. They need to keep room for change and accept the modified requirements when they come to offer an apt end product to the client.

It is another question that can vary for different individuals. It can depend on the expert's ability and familiarity with the tools he intends to use. Moreover, it can also depend on the database entries, project complexity and other details. You can answer this question based on your previous experiences and records. However, ensure that you give an accurate and fair figure without trying to impress your interviewer.
On an average, the apt value for the number of test cases one can execute in a day is 50. You can vary this value based on your professional excellence, but the average remains the same. It is a acceptable number, and if the test cases are of a high level, you may only be able to execute ten of them in a day! Factors that influence this count are:
Complexity of the test case is the most significant factor that decides how many test cases one can run in a day. If the framework is complicated and it takes a lot of time to complete the execution of one test case, the count will not be very impressive.
If the database entries that have to get checked during the test run are a lot, it will take time to complete the execution. Additionally, if you have complexities like tax calculations in the database tables, it will get time-consuming.
Efficiency of the tool and the testing technique is another factor determining the time that will go into successful test case execution. You can conveniently execute more test cases if you choose a speedy tool and an effective technique.
So, you can even mention these things in your answer, telling your interviewer that you can execute around 50 test cases, but it may vary depending on these reasons. It is one of the scenario based software testing interview questions and answers for experienced, so answer it carefully.

As indicated by the word harness, it is a collection of test drivers, software and tools used to test an application in varied environments. The test engineers thoroughly analyze the product under question using these harnesses to ensure the desired outcome. These harnesses include every little detail required to run a test, including the test cases, stubs, source file under test and more. The reasons why you should use the test harness are as listed below.

• It helps automate the test processes and execute test suites of test cases.
• It can help generate test reports associated with each test case which serves as a reference for anyone working on the project.
• Test harness provides support for debugging and helps the developer teams measure the code coverage at the programming level.
• It helps enhance the quality and efficiency of the software components and makes the applications super effective.
• It also helps deal with the complexities that the test engineers find challenging to stimulate

These are advantages of the test harness, making it an effective tool for test engineers. You can find its use, particularly in automation and integration testing and the popular harness tools available in the market are Junit and Nunit.

Project tailoring is the process in which the engineers reference the framework documents, standards, tools, techniques and other elements suitable for that particular organization. In simple words, it is the process of customizing the entire project development process based on the target, requirements and resource availability. This process helps in a lot of ways listed below.

• It covers the project inefficiencies as you identify them well on time and find solutions or adjust the development process accordingly.
• If you follow an effective process for the project completion, rest assured that the product quality will be top-notch, and the end product will meet all the quality standards.
• When the end product is efficient, your client will surely have excellent feedbacks to give that will increase the business reputation significantly. It will eventually help you fetch more business!
• Project tailoring saves you from financial losses as you would not have any instances where you have to rethink the strategy or re-run the tests to verify product efficiency.
• With a tailor-made project process strategy, you can rest assured that the delivery will be on time and there are no chances of wasting resources.

There are plenty of other advantages of the project tailoring process. Hence, you should choose it before starting with a new assignment. Choose the best project managers with hands-on experience in the domain to do the task and enjoy all the perks!

CMMI, short for Capability Maturity Model Integration, is an elaborate version of CMM with the addition of an integration module. Earlier, it was challenging to integrate the other three modules in a specific discipline, so the experts started using an upgraded version known as CMMI. The fundamental objectives of CMMI are:

• Meeting all the end-user requirements and expectations
• Creating value that sounds impressive to the investors of stakeholders
• Support market growth
• Enhancing the quality of the products or software system under question
• Improved market reputation that comes with excellent product development and delivery.
• CMMI Maturity Levels

This model categorizes the maturity level of an organization into five levels. The aim of the team is to raise the business to level five and then focus on the maintenance part.

Maturity Level 1: Initial

At an initial level, processes are ad hoc and chaotic and usually do not have a stable environment. Organizations do create products and services but often exceed their budget and deadlines. They have a tendency to over-commit and meet expectations by abandoning the process.

Maturity Level 2: Managed

The organizations with second-level maturity are a bit managed. They create plans and ensure that they stick to their standards even in times of crisis. The management checks the progress and the workflow every now and then, ensuring that all their clients are satisfied with the product or services they get.

Maturity Level 3: Defined

The next level of maturity that an organization gains is when it covers the aspects of levels two and three. They have detailed process descriptions and procedures that their teams would follow to meet the user requirements. Another difference is that, at maturity level three, the processes get managed proactively with a thorough understanding of the interrelation between the test strategies.

Maturity Level 4: Quantitatively Managed

After the organization have met the maturity of level 2, 3, and 4, it reaches a quantitatively managed position. They use all the quantitative aspects as a reference to pre-determine the process performance and plan things accordingly. A better idea of the process and its outcomes ensure negligible chances of failure.

Maturity Level 5: Optimizing

It is the highest level of maturity and the organizations who have achieved it focus on continuously improving the process performance. They use incremental and innovative technical improvements to maintain and upgrade their existing products and services.

After the business reaches the highest level of maturity, the only task left is to maintain and entertain the modification requests.

Impact analysis is significant as the end user and the production team need to know the consequences of the project. The end user should know how the software they have asked to develop would contribute to their existing system or how it will make it better. At the same time, the development team should know what purposes they will solve after delivering the end product. The quality analysis teams do impact analysis every time there is a new feature that needs to get added to the current version. This analysis will help them in:

• Evaluating the changes that the new upgrades will bring.
• Identifying the areas of a system that will get affected by the change.
• Performing impact analysis before actually starting working on the project is crucial, and the test team follows the steps listed-below for it.
• The team gathers all the information about the change they will work on.
• They will identify the modules that might get affected as they bring about this change.
• The impact of the change on the low-level modules will get tested to understand every little detail about the influence on the entire project.
• Once the team is well aware of the positive and negative changes, they will work on things they can do to handle the positive and negative influences.
• The basic idea of impact analysis is to go ahead with the project development and testing phase only when you know how any step you take will impact the system.