People Skills – Team Composition
Your test team consists of four members (Mary, Bob, Mark, Dave) with different interpersonal skills.
The following skills assessment spreadsheet shows the characteristics of the team members with respect to a list of interpersonal-skills (for each characteristic only the member with the highest level of that characteristic is indicated and marked with ‘X’):
On the next project a member of your test team will have to perform some routine tasks requiring collaboration with other teams.
Who in your test team would you expect to be most suitable at doing these tasks?
Number of correct responses: 1
K43 credits
Test Management
Which of the following statements about management of product quality risks in mature organizations with respect to the lifecycle, is true?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Test Management
You are the Test Manager of a new project aimed at developing a software system that must be certified at level B of the DO-178B standard. The project will follow a V-Model software development life cycle and it will have four formal levels of testing: component, integration, system and acceptance testing.
You must produce the test plan documentation for this project by providing an adequate coordination across the four levels of testing in order to assure auditability.
Which of the following answers would you expect to best describe how to organize the test plan?
Number of correct responses: 1
K32 credits
Test Management
The following chart plots the cumulative number of defects opened against the cumulative number of defects closed during system testing of a software product.
Which of the following statements is true?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Test Management
Based on the historical data of 5 past and similar projects, you have calculated these average numbers of defects detected in system testing:
- for each 10000 LOC (lines of code), 200 defects
- for each person-month of development team effort, 49 defects
You want to use this information to perform estimation for a new project.
The project manager tells you that he/she has estimated 20000 new LOC for this new project.
Four developers work for four months on this project before system testing.
During system testing, 797 defects are discovered.
Assume that the system test of this new project is using the same amount of work as spent in the past projects.
Based on this information only, which of the following statement is certainly true about this project?
Number of correct responses: 1
K33 credits
Test Management
You are the Test Manager on a project following an iterative life-cycle model. The project should consist of nine iterations of one month duration each. It is planned to develop the most important features to have a stable core of the application in the first three iterations and to add the additional features in the last six iterations.
At the beginning of the first iteration, only a draft version of the requirements specification document for the core features is available. Assume that during each of the first three iterations, the chosen features are fully completed and unit tested.
Which of the following statements is true in this context?
Number of correct responses: 1
K43 credits
Test Tools and Automation
In your organization the following tools of the same vendor are currently in use: a requirements management tool, a test management tool and a bug tracking tool.
You are the Test Manager.
You are currently evaluating a test automation tool of the same vendor (to complete the vendor's tool suite) against an interesting open-source test automation tool under the GNU GPL (General Public License).
There are no initial costs associated to that open-source tool.
Which of the following statements associated to the selection of the open-source tool is correct in this scenario?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Test Tools and Automation
Assume you are managing a test automation project for a mission-critical system.
Because vendor provided tools and open source solutions don't meet the needs of this project, you ask your test team to develop a custom automation framework.
Which of the following management issues associated to the development of this custom automation framework is least likely to manage?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Test Tools and Automation
Assume you are a Test Manager involved in system testing of a CRM application for a Pay-TV company. Currently the application is able to support a proper number of users assuring the required responsiveness. Since the business is expected to grow, you have been asked to evaluate the ability of the application to grow to support more users while maintaining the same responsiveness.
Which of the following tools would you expect to be the most useful at performing this evaluation?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Test Tools and Automation
After a selection process you have selected a test management tool that is going be introduced in your organization and used by your test team in a pilot project.
You have already identified the member of your test team who will be the administrator of the tool, since he/she has a significant experience with the administration of test management tools and so he/she is able to make effective and efficient up-front decisions about "how" the tool will be used. You have also developed a training plan for the other members of your test team.
In collaboration with the administrator of the tool you have also devised standard ways of managing, storing and maintaining the tool and its assets including backup/restore procedures.
You have also analyzed standard formats supported by the tool (CSV, XLS, XML, etc.) to export, import and archive all the information managed by the tool itself (requirements, test case specifications, test plans etc.) for compliance with the most important test management tools, in order to minimize the impacts of migrating this information to a new tool that could replace the existing one in the future.
Which of the following phases in the lifecycle of the new tool has NOT been adequately considered in this description?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Test Tools and Automation
Assume you are the Test Manager in charge of independent testing for avionics applications.
You are in charge of testing for a project to implement three different CSCI (Computer Software Configuration Item):
- a BOOT-X CSCI that must be certified at level B of the DO-178B standard
- a DIAG-X CSCI that must be certified at level C of the DO-178B standard
- a DRIV-X CSCI that must be certified at level A of the DO-178B standard
These are three different software modules written in C language to run on a specific hardware platform.
You have been asked to select a single code coverage tool to perform the mandatory code coverage measurements, in order to meet the structural coverage criteria prescribed by the DO-178B standard. This tool must be qualified as a verification tool under DO-178B.
Since there are significant budget constraints to purchase this tool, you are evaluating an open-source tool that is able to provide different types of code coverage. This tool meets perfectly your technical needs in terms of the programming language and the specific hardware platform (it supports also the specific C-compiler).
The source code of the tool is available.
Your team could easily customize the tool to meet the project needs. This tool is not qualified as a verification tool under the DO-178B.
Which of the following are the three main concerns related to that open-source tool selection?
Number of correct responses: 3
K43 credits (2 credits out of 3 credits correct, 1 credit point)
Improving the Testing Process
Which of the following statements about the STEP test process improvement model is true?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Improving the Testing Process
Consider the following statements describing the importance of improving the test process:
I. Test process improvement is important because being focused only on the test process it can provide recommendations to improve the test process itself, but it can’t indicate or suggest improvement to areas of the development process
II. Test process improvement is important because it is much more effective than software process improvement to improve the quality of a software system
III. Test process improvement is important because several process improvement models (STEP, TPI Next, TMMi) have been developed over the years
IV. Test process improvement is important because every organization, regardless of the context, should always achieve the maximum level of maturity of testing described in the test improvement models such as TMMi
Which of the following answers is correct?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Improving the Testing Process
Which of the following statements about the TMMi test process improvement model is true?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Defect Management
Which of the following information would you expect to be the most useful to perform a defect clustering analysis?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Defect Management
Assume you are working on a defect management process to be used by a software organization to track the current status of the defects reports for several projects.
When a defect is found for investigation a defect report is created in “Opened” state that is the unique initial state. The defect report status has also a unique finale state that is the “Closed” state.
The following state transition diagram describes the states of this defect management process:
where only the initial (“Opened”) and final (“Closed”) states are indicated while the remaining states (V, W, X, Y, Z) have yet to be named.
Which of the following assignments would you expect to best complete the defect management process?
Number of correct responses: 1
K32 credits
The main objectives the senior management team wants to achieve are:
- to reduce the costs associated with dynamic testing
- to use reviews to ensure that the project is on course for success and following the plan
- to use reviews as a well-documented and effective bug-removal activity following a formal process with well-defined roles
- to determine the effectiveness of reviews in terms of phase containment
- to improve phase containment effectiveness
Which of the following answers would you expect to describe the best way to achieve these objectives?
Number of correct responses: 1
K43 credits
Reviews
Which of the following factors could negatively influence a review?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
During the follow-up phase the following conditions are checked:
X1. The code has been completely reviewed
X2. All the identified defects have been correctly fixed and the modified code has been compiled successfully and run through all the static analyzers used by the project without warnings and errors
X3. The modified code is available under the configuration management system with a new version number for the specified CI
If these conditions are fulfilled then the review process terminates.
Which of the following characteristics of a formal review is missing in this description?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Reviews
You are a Test Manager working for a software organization where reviews have never been applied. After a meeting with your managers examining a business case for reviews, (including their costs, benefits, and potential issues), the management finally decides to adopt formal reviews for future projects.
You have been given a budget that you have spent to provide training in the review process and to introduce the review process on a pilot project.
On that pilot project the introduction of reviews has been very positive in terms of positive involvement from all the participants. All the reviews applied to different documents have been very effective for their purposes (especially at revealing defects).
Which of the following answers describes an important success factor for the introduction of formal reviews which is missing in this scenario?
Number of correct responses: 1
K43 credits
Reviews
Consider the following list of statements about audits and management reviews:
I. Audits are usually more effective than management reviews at finding defects
II. Audits and management reviews have the same main goals, the only difference is related to the roles and level of formality
III. A typical outcome of an audit includes observations and recommendations, corrective actions and a pass/fail assessment
IV. An audit is not the appropriate mechanism to use at the code review in order to detect defects prior to dynamic testing
Which of the following statements is true?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit
Which of the following is a factor that is likely to increase the test estimate? [1]
Your last project was released three months ago and used a risk-based approach. In production, a number of serious failures in low risk areas have occurred.
What is the most important lesson to be learned from this information? [2]
You are reviewing the project's traceability matrix after the first cycle of testing. You have discovered that new requirements have been introduced and others have
changed.
What should you do? [2]
Consider the following scenario:
Your customer is closely involved in the development project. Requirements are communicated verbally and rarely written down. An iterative development model is being followed and time boxing is used to stay on schedule.
Which of the following statements is true? [3]
The following is the unique “critical” quality risk item that has been identified:
CR-RSK-1. The GUI of the application might accept non-integer values for the input field designed to get the number of bottles from the user
Test analysis for system testing has just begun and the following test conditions have been identified:
TC-SEL-2. Test the selection of the package sizes
TC-SEL-4. Test wrong numbers of bottles for an order
TC-CR-RSK-1. Test the accepted values from the input field designed to get the number of bottles from the user
Assume that you have used traceability to determine the logical test cases that cover all the requirements and the single risk item identified in that scenario.
Which of the following is a positive logical test that is complete and correct, and covers the REQ-SEL-4 requirement?
Number of correct responses: 1
K32 credits
Testing Process
Assume you are the Test Manager for a new software release of an e-commerce application.
The server farm consists of six servers providing different capabilities. Each capability is provided through a set of web services.
The requirements specification document contains several SLAs (Service Level Agreements) like the following:
SLA-001: 99.5 percent of all transactions shall have a response time less than five seconds under a load of up-to 5000 concurrent users
The main objective is to assure that all the SLAs specified in the requirements specification document will be met before system release. You decide to apply a risk-based testing strategy and an early risk analysis confirms that performance is high risk. You can count on a well-written requirements specification and on a model of the system behavior under various load levels produced by the system architect.
Which of the following test activities would you expect to be the less important ones to achieve the test objectives in this scenario?
Number of correct responses: 1
K43 credits
Assume that no additional product risks have been identified during the first week of test execution.
Which of the following answers would you expect to best describe the residual risks associated with the identified product risks, at the end of the first week of test execution?
Number of correct responses: 1
K32 credits
The following is the unique “critical” quality risk item that has been identified:
CR-RSK-1. The GUI of the application might accept non-integer values for the input field designed to get the number of bottles from the user
Test analysis for system testing has just begun and the following test conditions have been identified:
TC-SEL-2. Test the selection of the package sizes
TC-SEL-4. Test wrong numbers of bottles for an order
TC-CR-RSK-1. Test the accepted values from the input field designed to get the number of bottles from the user
What is the MINIMUM number of test conditions that must be added to fulfill both the EXCR1 and EXCR2 exit criteria?
Number of correct responses: 1
K32 credits
You are following a risk-based testing strategy. The test execution time is very limited. Assume that all the product risk items require more or less the same level of test effort.
Which of the following answers describes the best execution schedule in this scenario?
Number of correct responses: 1
K33 credits
People Skills – Team Composition
Which of the following would you expect to be most likely an example of a motivating factor for testers?
Number of correct responses: 1
K21 credit