Landing your first job as a Software Quality Assurance (SQA) professional can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. This guide will help you ace your interview with 50 commonly asked fresher-level SQA questions and their concise, easy-to-understand answers. Let’s get started!

1. What is Software Quality Assurance (SQA)?

Answer: SQA is a process that ensures software meets the specified requirements by following systematic testing processes, methodologies, and quality standards.

2. Why is SQA important?

Answer: It ensures the delivery of high-quality software, reduces bugs and improves customer satisfaction while minimizing development costs and risks.

3. What are the main responsibilities of an SQA engineer?

Answer: Writing test cases, executing test plans, identifying and documenting bugs, reporting them, and ensuring the product meets quality standards.

4. What is the difference between QA and QC?

Answer:

• QA (Quality Assurance): Focuses on process improvement to prevent defects.
• QC (Quality Control): Focuses on identifying defects in the final product

5. What are the types of testing in software development?

Answer: Functional, Non-functional, Unit, Integration, System, Regression, Smoke, Sanity, Performance, Load, and Stress Testing.

6. What is the SDLC?

Answer: The Software Development Life Cycle is a process that outlines the steps for creating software, including planning, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance.

7. What is the STLC?

Answer: The Software Testing Life Cycle includes all testing activities: requirements analysis, test planning, test case design, environment setup, test execution, and closure.

8. Explain the difference between Manual and Automated Testing.

Answer:

• Manual Testing: Performed by testers without tools.
• Automated Testing: Uses scripts and tools (e.g., Selenium, Cypress).

9. What is a Test Case?

Answer: A document describing test inputs, execution conditions, and expected results to validate software functionality.

10. What is a Test Plan?

Answer: A document that outlines the testing strategy, objectives, resources, schedule, and scope of testing activities.

11. What are the key components of a Test Plan?

Answer: Objectives, scope, resources, tools, schedule, test environment, and risk assessment.

12. What is Regression Testing?

Answer: Testing conducted to ensure new changes do not adversely affect existing functionality.

13. Define Smoke Testing.

Answer: A preliminary test to ensure basic functionality works before proceeding to detailed testing.

14. What is Sanity Testing?

Answer: A narrow and deep test to verify specific functionalities after minor changes.

15. What is a Bug Life Cycle?

Answer: The process a bug goes through, from identification to resolution, including stages like New, Assigned, Fixed, Retested, Verified, and Closed.

16. What is a Severity in bug reporting?

Answer: It indicates the impact of a defect on the application, ranging from critical to minor.

17. What is Priority in bug reporting?

Answer: It refers to the urgency of fixing a defect based on business needs.

18. What are the different levels of testing?

Answer: Unit Testing, Integration Testing, System Testing, and Acceptance Testing.

19. What tools are commonly used in Manual Testing?

Answer: Tools like JIRA, Bugzilla, and TestLink are commonly used for bug tracking and test case management.

20. What tools are used for Automated Testing?

Answer: Selenium, Cypress, Appium, TestComplete, and JUnit.

21. What is Performance Testing?

Answer: Testing the speed, responsiveness, and stability of a system under load.

22. How do you write a good test case?

Answer: Include clear test objectives, preconditions, steps, expected results, and postconditions.

23. What is White Box Testing?

Answer: Testing based on an internal understanding of the code, focusing on logic and structure.

24. What is Black Box Testing?

Answer: Testing without knowledge of the internal code structure, focusing only on inputs and outputs.

25. What is Grey Box Testing?

Answer: A combination of White Box and Black Box Testing, where testers have partial knowledge of the code.

26. What is Exploratory Testing?

Answer: An informal testing approach where testers explore the application without predefined test cases.

27. What is Usability Testing?

Answer: Testing to ensure the application is user-friendly and meets accessibility standards.

28. Define Test Coverage.

Answer: The extent to which test cases cover the application’s requirements and functionality.

29. What is Compatibility Testing?

Answer: Ensuring the application works seamlessly across various devices, browsers, and operating systems.

30. What is API Testing?

Answer: Testing the application programming interfaces (APIs) for functionality, performance, and security.

31. What is End-to-End Testing?

Answer: Testing the complete flow of an application from start to finish.

32. What is a Test Environment?

Answer: The setup where testing activities are conducted, including hardware, software, and network configurations.

33. What is Defect Leakage?

Answer: A defect found in production that was missed during earlier testing phases.

34. What is Ad Hoc Testing?

Answer: An unstructured testing approach conducted without documentation or planning.

35. What is the difference between Verification and Validation?

Answer:

• Verification: Ensures the product is being built correctly.
• Validation: Ensures the right product is being built.

36. What is Boundary Value Analysis?

Answer: A technique to test boundary conditions by selecting values at, just below, and just above the boundaries.

37. What is Equivalence Partitioning?

Answer: Dividing input data into partitions to reduce test cases while maintaining coverage.

38. What is the Agile Testing Process?

Answer: Testing activities in Agile are iterative and continuous, focusing on collaboration and incremental progress.

39. What is Continuous Integration (CI)?

Answer: A practice where code changes are frequently integrated and tested automatically.

40. What is a Test Suite?

Answer: A collection of test cases that verify a specific functionality or feature.

41. What is Risk-Based Testing?

Answer: Prioritizing testing efforts based on the risk of failure.

42. What is Localization Testing?

Answer: Testing an application for language and cultural appropriateness.

43. What is Globalization Testing?

Answer: Ensuring an application supports multiple languages and regions.

44. What is a Test Data?

Answer: Input data used to execute test cases and validate functionality.

45. What is Defect Density?

Answer: The number of defects identified in a specific module relative to its size.

46. What is Load Testing?

Answer: Testing how the application performs under expected user loads.

47. What is Stress Testing?

Answer: Testing how the application performs under extreme conditions.

48. What is Scalability Testing?

Answer: Ensuring the application can handle growth in workload or user count.

49. What is Security Testing?

Answer: Identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring the application is secure from threats.

50. What are the qualities of a good SQA engineer?

Answer: Attention to detail, analytical thinking, strong communication skills, and knowledge of testing tools and techniques.

Takeaways:

• Be confident and practice these questions.
• Showcase your enthusiasm and willingness to learn.
• Use real-world examples where applicable during the interview.

Good luck with your SQA journey! 🚀