Originally published on Developer.com, December 12, 2016.
Perhaps the most challenging role in the software development process is that of the quality assurance professional. It requires a set of soft skills for dealing with developer egos and hard technical skills to get bugs to scurry out of their hiding places and into the light. Candidate for these roles can expect questions about their hard skills including the tools that they use. For more about how critical the quality assurance role is, check out Anatomy of a Software Development Role: Quality Assurance.
Q1: How do you create test plans, scripts, and cases?
A: Candidates’ answers will vary, but should focus on how the test planning is done and how it’s connected with the requirements and design.
Q2: When is automated testing appropriate?
A: Automated testing greatly reduces the effort to test for regressions when the user interface is relatively stable.
Q3: What kinds of things do you test for in unstructured testing?
A: The answer should include boundary conditions where the value should be in a range or of a specific data type, but the tester provides data outside of that range.
Q4: How do you record the defects that you find?
A: The answer here should include how the candidate gathers information. The information gathered should be to help the developer locate the problem so they can resolve it.
Q5: How do you test various user roles?
A: The answer should include the types of test accounts created and how their security is managed. A candidate should also mention standard approaches to being able to test multiple users at the same time, including private/incognito windows and the use of multiple browsers.
Q6: How do you perform multiple browser testing?
A: Obviously this means having the common browsers installed on the testing machine. However, a candidate should also discuss a strategy for which operations are tested in each browser; because, in most cases, testing every operation in every browser is prohibitively expensive.
Q7: How do you do performance testing?
A: Automated tools can time the responses of the system. Automated testing also allows a quality assurance professional to generate load so they can see what happens when there are many users on the system.
Q8: How do you do failure mode testing?
A: Failure testing requires coordinated work with the deployment / DevOps folks so they can initiate a simulated failure. The point of the question is to confirm that the candidate has considered this kind of testing.
Q9: How do you work with developers to find the source of problems?
A: The point of this question is to find a candidate who is willing to work with the developer to find the solution, instead of throwing a problem across the wall.
Q10: What’s the most difficult-to-find defect that you ever helped resolve?
A: The answers will, of course, vary but the point is to highlight the skills that not everyone has, and the way that the candidate has worked as part of a team to solve a problem – this is key because all difficult problems are team-solved.