Top 50 Manual Testing Interview Questions & Answers To Master Software Testing
Looking for interview questions on manual testing? You will find everything you need in this article. Learn more about the basics of manual testing.
In today's competitive world, software testing is critical to success. It is indispensable to carry out manual tests as part of software development whenever automated tests are unavailable. Therefore, manual testing is still in high demand.
Given its high demand, it is imperative to learn manual testing to help testers gain deeper insight from an end user's perspective.
Manual Testing Interview Questions & Answers
This article contains the perfect guide to help you master software testing. So, here are some of the most common Manual Testing Interview Questions.
1. What is Software Testing?
Answer: The purpose of software testing is to identify the quality, correctness, and completeness of developed software. In this process, a series of activities are conducted to locate and correct errors in the software before it is made available to the public.
2. What are the two main categories of software testing?
Answer: Software testing covers a wide range of topics, but it can be broadly divided into two categories:
- Manual Testing: In manual testing, Testers manually execute test cases without using any test automation tools. QA testers manually test the software application.
- Automation Testing: In this process, tools, scripts, and software are used to perform test cases by repeating predefined actions. Test Automation involves replacing manual work with systems or devices that are more efficient.
3. Why do we need software testing?
Answer: Software Testing ensures that the software product is safe and good enough for release to the market. We need software testing for the following reasons:
- It identifies the errors and defects that occur during the development process.
- It reduces the coding cycles by identifying issues early on in development.
- It makes sure that the application does not fail.
- Ensures that the product meets market standards and is bug-free.
- Reduces maintenance costs and delivers more accurate, consistent, and reliable results.
- Software Testing helps to ensure that the customer is satisfied with the application and that the organization is reliable.
4. What different types of manual testing are there?
Answer: Here are some types of manual testing:
- Acceptance Testing
- Black Box Testing
- Integration Testing
- System Testing
- White Box Testing
- Unit Testing
[These are not in order. So don't misunderstand.]
5. What is a testbed in manual testing?
Answer: Testbeds are environments set up for testing. In this environment, an application is tested, along with the hardware and any software required to run the program to be tested. It includes hardware, software, network configuration, a test application, and other software.
6. What is quality control? Is it similar to Quality Assurance?
Answer: The quality control process involves running a program to determine whether a program has any defects and ensuring that the software meets all stakeholders' requirements.
7. What are the advantages of designing tests early in the life cycle?
Answer: By designing tests early in the life cycle, we can prevent defects from entering the main code.
8. What are the types of defects?
Answer: There are three types of defects:
- Wrong: These defects are occurred by requirements being implemented incorrectly.
- Missing: It is used to note the missing things, e.g., a specification was not implemented, or a customer requirement was not recognized.
- Extra: It is an extra feature that was not requested by the customer. In every case, the customer wishes for an attribute that is not specified in the specification. Due to the deviation from the user's requirements, it is considered a defect.
9. What is exploratory testing?
Answer: Exploratory testing is the simultaneous design and execution of tests against an application. During this kind of testing, the tester utilizes its domain expertise and testing experience to predict where and under what conditions unexpected behavior might occur.
10. When should exploratory testing be performed?
Answer: As a final check, exploratory testing takes place before the software is released. It serves as a complement to automated regression testing.
11. What are the different levels of manual testing?
Answer: There are four levels of manual testing:
Unit Testing: Tests are performed on the smallest amount of code that is considered a unit in a system and can be logically isolated from the rest. Essentially, it aims to determine whether the standalone module is functionally correct.
Integration Testing: A level of software testing in which individual components are combined and tested to determine if they work together as intended. Here, the main objective is to test the interface between the modules.
System Testing: During system testing, all components of the software are tested together to ensure that the overall product meets the requirements. A variety of testing methods are available for system assessment including usability testing, regression testing, and functional testing.
User Acceptance Testing: User acceptance testing, or UAT (user acceptance testing), determines whether or not the software is ready for release.
12. What is the test case?
Answer: A test case is a document that contains a set of conditions or actions carried out on the software application to check the expected functionality of the feature.
The purpose of test cases is to describe a specific idea to be tested, without specifying precisely what steps to take or what data to use. For example, you might document something like Test if coupons can be applied to the actual price.
13. Explain the procedure for manual testing?
Answer: Following are the steps involved in manual testing:
- Planning and Control
- Analysis and Design
- Implementation and Execution
- Evaluating exit criteria and Reporting
- Test Closure activities
14. Explain the difference between alpha testing and beta testing.
Answer: Here's the difference between both alpha testing and beta testing:
Alpha Testing: It is a type of software testing that identifies bugs in software before it is released to the general public or real users. Moreover, Alpha Testing is a type of user acceptance testing.
Beta Testing: A real-world environment is used to test the software application by real users. Additionally, Beta Testing is a type of user acceptance testing.
15. What is API testing?
Answer: An application program interface (API) testing process is performed to determine if an API meets the expected requirements for functionality, reliability, performance, and security. Essentially, API testing is designed to identify bugs, inconsistencies, or deviations from an API's expected behavior.
Typically, applications have three distinct layers:
- UI or Presentation Layer
- Business Layer or application UI for business logic processing.
- Database Layer for modeling and manipulating data.
API testing takes place at the most crucial layer of software architecture, the Business Layer.
16. What is acceptance testing?
Answer: Acceptance testing serves to enable a user/customer to determine if they will accept the software product. Additionally, it validates compliance with an agreed-upon set of acceptance criteria. At this level, the system is tested for user acceptance.
Types:
User acceptance testing: Testers perform this type of testing after the product has been tested by them. The user acceptance testing is performed to determine whether the system meets the acceptance criteria based on the user needs, requirements, and business processes. Alternatively, it's called end-user testing.
Operational acceptance testing: Before the product is released to the market, and operational acceptance test is performed. However, it is performed after the user acceptance testing.
Contract and regulation acceptance testing: A contract acceptance test involves testing the system against certain criteria outlined in the contract. During regulation acceptance testing, the software application is evaluated to ensure that it fits government regulations or not.
Alpha and beta testing: In the development environment, alpha testing is performed before releasing the software to the customer. After receiving input from alpha testers, a bug is fixed by the developer to improve the product's quality. In contrast with alpha testing, beta testing is performed in the customer environment. Customer testing provides feedback for product improvement, which is then incorporated into the product.
17. What do you mean by automated testing?
Answer: Automated testing refers to the use of software tools that perform tests without human intervention. You can use automated testing in GUI, performance, API, etc.
18. What is Benchmark Testing?
Answer: Benchmark testing consists of comparing the performance of an application against a standard provided by some other organization. It is a standard test that offers us insight into how we stack up against others.
19. What is Bottom-up testing?
Answer: Based on integration testing, bottom-up testing involves testing the lowest level components first, then higher-level components. Until a component has been tested at the highest level, the process is repeated.
20. What is Baseline Testing?
Answer: Baseline testing captures performance information by running a set of tests. By using the information collected, baseline testing improves the performance and capabilities of the application. In a baseline, we compare the current performance of an application against its past performance.
21. Which types are testing are important for web testing?
Answer: In web testing, two types of testing are very important:
Performance Testing: Performance testing measures quality attributes of a system such as responsiveness, speed under different load conditions, and scalability. In performance testing, we identify which attributes need to be improved before launching a product.
Security Testing: Security testing is a method of ensuring that the data and resources on a system are safe from attackers.
22. What is the difference between Retesting and Regression Testing?
Answer:
| Retesting | Regression |
| It is a type of software testing that checks to see if code changes do not affect the features and functions of an application. | It is a test process that examines the test cases that failed in the final execution. |
| Regression testing does not include defect verification. | Regression testing includes defect verification. |
| As the name implies, regression testing aims to ensure that the changes made to the code do not affect existing functionality. | Retesting is applied on the defect fixes. |
| It is also known as generic testing. | It is also known as planned testing. |
| Regression testing can be automated, whereas manual testing can be time-consuming and expensive. | Retesting cannot be automated. |
| Test cases that passed in earlier builds are subject to regression testing. Retesting involves executing test cases that failed earlier. | It is possible to run regression testing at the same time as retesting. In comparison with regression testing, retesting is more important. |
23. What’s the difference between verification and validation in testing?
Answer:
| Verification | Validation |
| Verification is a static analysis technique. In this case, the code is not executed while testing. Reviews, inspections, and walkthroughs are examples. | Dynamic analysis is a technique for testing code by executing it. Functional and non-functional testing techniques are examples. |
24. What is the purpose of exit criteria?
Answer: To determine whether a test level has been completed, the exit criteria are used.
25. What is the difference between preventative and reactive approaches to testing?
Answer: Reactive tests are designed after the software has been produced, while preventative tests are designed earlier.
26. What’s the difference between a bug and a defect?
Answer: A bug is a fault in the software that is discovered during testing. Meanwhile, Defects are variances between expected results and actual results detected by the developer after the product goes live.
27. Explain the defect life cycle.
Answer: Throughout the defect's lifetime, a defect proceeds through various phases. It starts with the discovery of a defect and ends with its closure after it has been ensured it cannot be reproduced. This is what we call the defect life cycle.
28. Define what is a critical bug.
Answer: The term "critical bug" refers to a bug that may affect the majority of the functionality of an application. Generally, it means that a crucial piece of functionality or a major system component has been broken, and there is no way to work around it. Unless the critical bug is addressed, the application cannot be distributed to the end-user.
29. Why is the decision table testing used?
Answer: In a decision table, inputs appear in one column, and outputs appear in the same column, but below the inputs. Additionally, the decision table test is used to test systems whose specifications take the form of rules or cause-effect combinations.
30. What is the pesticide paradox? How to overcome it?
Answer: According to the pesticide paradox, if the same tests are repeated repeatedly, eventually the same test cases will no longer find new bugs. Developers will pay extra attention to places where testers find more defects and might overlook other areas. Pesticide paradox prevention methods:
- By writing a whole new set of test cases to exercise different parts of the software.
- To develop new test cases and add them to the existing test cases.
In the area where defect numbers have dropped, these methods can help find more defects.
31. What is the test harness?
Answer: The purpose of a test harness is to collect software and test information arranged to test a program unit by running it under changing conditions, such as stress and load, and monitoring its behavior and outputs. Two main parts make up a Test Harness:
- A Test Execution Engine
- Test script repository
32. What is test closure?
Answer: A test closure is a document that summarizes all the tests performed during the software development life cycle, as well as providing a detailed analysis of the bugs detected and the errors fixed. Moreover, this memo consists of an aggregate number of experiments, the total number of experiments executed, the total number of imperfections discovered, plus the total number of imperfections settled, the total number of bugs not settled, the total number of bugs rejected, and so on.
33. What is Defect Cascading in Software Testing?
Answer: Defect Cascading occurs when one defect triggers another in the application. A defect that goes unnoticed during testing can lead to other defects. As a result, multiple defects arise at later stages in the development process. Therefore, identifying the affected feature becomes challenging if defect cascading affects other features in the application. To resolve this issue, you may need to make different test cases. Even then, it is difficult and time-consuming.
34. What is the difference between manual testing and automation testing?
Answer:
| Manual Testing | Automation Testing |
| Manual testing is less accurate and more vulnerable to human error than automated testing. | Automated testing, however, has increased reliability as it utilizes tools and scripts. |
| The investment cost is low, but the Return on Investment (ROI) is low as well. | Both ROI and investment cost are high in Automation testing. |
| As all tasks are performed by human resources, manual testing takes a lot of time. | The Tests are performed by software tools, so time is low as a result. |
| When test cases are run once or twice, manual testing is preferred. Additionally, suited for exploratory, usability, and Adhoc testing. | Automation can be used for Regression Testing, Performance Testing, Load Testing, or highly repeatable functional test cases. |
| Detects glitches through human observation. As a result, manual testing improves the customer experience. | There is no guarantee of a positive customer experience since there is no human observation involved. |
35. What is a top-down and bottom-up approach to testing?
Answer:
Top-Down: Testing occurs from top to bottom. Thus, high-level modules are tested first, followed by low-level modules. Lastly, the low-level modules are incorporated into a high-level state to ensure the framework is functioning correctly.
Bottom-Up: Tests are conducted at all levels, from the base to the top. The lowest level modules are tested first, followed by the higher-level state modules. To ensure that the framework is filling in as it had been proposed, the high-level state modules are coordinated down to a low level.
36. What are the different models available in SDLC?
Answer: In software testing, there are several models available, including:
- Agile model
- Hybrid model
- Prototype model
- Rapid Application development [RAD]
- Rational unified process model[RUP]
- Spiral Model
- Verification and validation model
- Waterfall model
37. Why do we need to perform compatibility testing?
Answer: Even though the software may have been developed for one platform, there is a possibility that users might use it on other platforms. Therefore, they may encounter some bugs and stop using the application, affecting the business. As a result, we will perform one round of compatibility testing.
38. When should you opt for manual testing over automation testing?
Answer: Manual testing is often more effective than automation testing in the following situations:
Short-time projects: Even though automated tests are designed to save time and resources, they require time and resources to design and maintain. It can be much more efficient to rely on manual testing when building a small promotional website.
Ad-havoc testing: There is no specific approach to ad-hoc testing. Ad-hoc testing is unplanned testing in which the tester's insight and understanding are all that matters. Using manual testing, this can be accomplished.
Exploratory Test: Testing of this type requires the tester to have the knowledge, experience, analytical, logical skills, creativity, and intuition. It is therefore important to involve humans in exploratory testing.
Usability Testing: During usability testing, the tester needs to measure how user-friendly, efficient, or convenient the software or product is for the end-user. Manual testing would seem more appropriate since human observation is the most important aspect.
39. How will you determine when to stop testing?
Answer: It can be difficult to decide when to stop testing. Modern software applications sometimes have so many interdependent components, that testing them completely is impossible. When deciding when to stop testing, these factors are often considered:
- When the Beta or Alpha testing period ends.
- The bug rate falls below a certain level.
- Deadlines (release deadlines, testing deadlines, etc.).
- Coverage of code or functionality or requirements reaches a specified point
- Test cases completed with a certain percentage passed.
- When the test budget is depleted.
40. What is the term ‘quality’ mean when testing?
Answer: Quality software is generally bug-free, delivered on time and within budget, meets requirements and/or expectations, and is maintainable. However, quality is a subjective concept. It depends on who the 'customer is and what their overall influence is. For example, each customer will define quality differently; for example, the accounting department may define quality as a profitable product, while an end-user might define it as being user-friendly and free of bugs.
41. What are the Experience-based testing techniques?
Answer: The goal of experience-based testing is discovery, investigation, and learning. During his or her testing, the tester continuously studies and analyzes the product and applies his or her skills, traits, and experience to develop test strategies and test cases. Experience-based testing techniques include:
- Exploratory Testing
- Error Guessing
42. What is white box testing, and what are the various techniques?
Answer: Structure-based testing, also called white-box testing, requires a profound understanding of the code, as it tests some structural aspects of the application. This testing is intended to enhance security, determine how inputs and outputs flow through an application, and improve design and usability. White-box testing techniques include:
- Statement Coverage
- Decision Coverage
- Condition Coverage
- Multiple Condition Coverage
43. What is black box testing, and what are the various techniques?
Answer: Black-Box Testing, also known as specification-based testing, analyzes the functionality of a software/application without knowing much about its internal structure/design. This testing is meant to ensure the system as a whole work correctly and meets user expectations. There are various black-box testing techniques, including:
- Boundary Value Analysis
- Cause-effect Graphing
- Decision Table Based Technique
- Equivalence Partitioning
- Use Case Testing
44. Is it true that we can do system testing at any stage?
Answer: As part of system testing, all components of the software are tested as a whole to guarantee that the overall product meets the specified requirements. Therefore, no. Only when all components are in place and working properly should the system test begin. Usually, system testing occurs before UAT (User Acceptance Testing).
45. What are the cases when you’ll consider choosing automated testing over manual testing?
Answer: In the following situations, automated testing is preferred over manual testing:
- When tests require periodic execution
- Reports are required for every execution
- Tests include repetitive steps
- When you have less time to complete the testing phase
- Tests need to be executed in a standard runtime environment
- When there is a lot of code that needs to be repeatedly tested
46. How do you test a product if the requirements are yet to freeze?
Answer: For some products, it's possible to not have a stack of requirements available. Finding out if an application has significant unexpected functionality might require serious effort, indicating deeper problems in the software development process. The functionality should be removed if it isn't necessary for the application. You may also plan a test based on assumptions made about the product. As the test plan author, make sure all assumptions are clearly documented.
47. Why is it impossible to test a program thoroughly or in other terms 100% bug-free?
Answer: It is impossible to build a software product that is bug-free 100% of the time. It is easy to minimize the error, flaw, or failure in a computer program that results in an unexpected or incorrect result. Here are two main reasons why it is impossible to test a program completely.
- Specifications for software can be subjective and lead to different interpretations.
- Testing a software program may require testing too many inputs, outputs, and paths.
48. How do you know the code has met specifications?
Answer: The best code or good code is readable, bug-free, and easy to maintain. Almost all organizations have coding standards that developers should adhere to, but everyone has different opinions about what's best, or how many rules are too many. There are a lot of tools such as traceability matrixes that allow requirements to be assigned to test cases. Once the execution of all test cases ends with success, the code meets the requirement.
49. What is configuration management?
Answer: The master plan of every high-performing organization details how the organization will operate and carry out its operations. There is no huge difference between software development and testing. A software configuration management (SCM) process involves a series of policies, tools, and processes that help organize, control, coordinate, and track the following:
- change requests
- code
- compilers and libraries
- documentation
- problems
- designs and tools
50. What if the software is so buggy it can’t be tested at all?
Answer: Sometimes testers encounter a bug that can't be fixed. The best way to deal with such situations is for testers to go through the process of reporting all bugs or blocking-type problems that occur, focusing on critical errors. It is important to notify and provide documentation to managers as evidence of this type of problem, which can result in severe problems, such as insufficient integration testing, poor design, improper build or release procedures, etc.
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