17 Software QA Interview Questions and Answers

Software QA interview questions

These Software Quality Assurance (QA) Analyst/Software Quality Analyst questions have been designed for various interviews, competitive exams and entrance tests. We have covered questions on both basic and advanced concepts which will help you improve your skills to face interview questions on Software QA.

Who are these Software QA interview questions designed for?

All the Quality Analysts, Software Quality Assurance (QA) Analysts, Developers, Programmers, Software Engineers, Test Engineers, Test Leads, Test Managers, QA lead and QA Managers will find these questions extremely useful. All freshers, BCA, BE, BTech, MCA and college students wanting to make a career in Software Testing will be highly benefited by these questions.

Software QA interview questions topics

This section covers Software QA topics like - Quality Assurance, Quality Control, software testing types, Verification and Validation, Traceability Matrix, CMMI, Agile testing etc.

1. What is the difference between Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Testing?

Quality assurance is process oriented. It is a process of planning, defining and setting the quality standards of the projects. QA assures whether quality is achieved in an effective and efficient way. The primary responsibility of the QA team is process definition and implementation, training, audits and selection of tools.

Quality control is product oriented. Quality Control is the process of detecting bugs by inspecting and testing the product and providing suggestions to improve the quality of the software. The role of QC includes technical reviews, software testing and code inspections. The methods used by Quality Control are usually established by the quality assurance.

Testing is a subset of QC and is an integral part of QC. It is the process of finding bugs in the product so that they get fixed.

2. What are the roles of software quality assurance engineer?

The roles of software quality assurance engineer are as enlisted below:

  • Tracking the development process of a product from start to end
  • Assessing the quality of specifications and technical design documents
  • Ensuring software development process doesn't sacrifice quality
  • Planning and implementing strategies for quality management and testing
  • Helping the software development team to identify problems early in the process

3. What are the different types of software testing?

  • Unit testing
  • Integration testing and regression testing
  • Smoke testing
  • Functional testing
  • Performance testing
  • White box and Black box testing
  • Alpha and Beta testing
  • Load testing and stress testing
  • System testing

4. What is negative testing?

Negative testing verifies if the application handles improper user behavior correctly. It ensures the system should handle invalid input or unexpected user behavior.

For example, the system should display a proper message and not the technical message, in case the user enters any invalid data in a text box.

5. Explain Verification and Validation. Explain difference between Verification and Validation.

Verification is a static mechanism of verifying documents, design, code and program. It checks if the software conforms to specifications.

Verification uses methods such as reviews and meetings, walkthroughs, inspection etc. and it is done by QA team.  

Verification is done at the starting of the development process and helps in understanding the product in a better way and thereby, reducing the chance of failure.

Validation is a dynamic mechanism and is the process of validating and testing the actual product. It checks if software meets the customer expectations and requirements.

Validation uses methods like black box testing, gray box testing, and white box testing etc. and it is done by testing team.

6. What are the different verification techniques?

Verification techniques are static in nature and are carried out by QA team. There are 3 verification techniques:

Walkthrough, Inspection and Review

Walkthrough is an informal process in which the author of the s/w product explains the product for others to come out with observation. It is more of a spreading information kind of session than seeking corrections.

Inspection is more formal than walkthrough. It is a thorough word-by-word checking of a software product with the intention of locating defects and checking for conformance to relevant standards.

Review is a method during which software design is examined by the individual other than the author who has produced it for comment or approval.

7. What is the difference between Load and Stress testing?

Load testing measures the system behavior under the expected load. It actually checks response time when the application is subjected to more than usual load and is done to see if the application can sustain the increased load. Load testing helps to identify the behavior of the application under load.

Stress testing is done to test the insane limits of an application. In this testing, load is increased gradually on the server till the time it crashes down. It helps to identify the breaking point of the system.