Automation Testing Interview Questions Answers
1. What is Automation Testing?
Answer: Automation testing, also known as Test Automation, is when the tester writes scripts and uses another software to test the product. This process involves the automation of a manual process. Automation Testing is used to re-run the test scenarios that were performed manually, quickly, and repeatedly.
2. Explain About Basics Of Rational Robot – Ibm Test Automation Tool?
Answer: Rational Robot is an automated testing tool for functional and regression testing for automating Windows, Java, IE and ERP applications that run on the Windows platform. The test cases for common objects such as lists, bitmaps, and menus are provided by Rational Robot. It also provides specialized test cases for objects that are specific to a development environment. The tools like Relational Test Manager, Rational Clear Quest, and Requisite Pro are integrated into the Rational Unified Processor for Change Management, Requirement Traceability, and Defect Tracking. It also supports UI technologies such as VS.NET controls, Web, Java, Oracle Forms, Borland Delphi and Sybase Power Builder applications.
3. What Are The Risks Associated In Automation Testing?
Answer:
The risks of Automation Testing are: Do you have skilled resources? The automation testing demands-resources with some knowledge about programming. Focus on the resources. Identify whether the resources have proper knowledge for automation testing. Are they capable to adapt easily to the new technologies? These measures are to be well assessed for building an automation testing team.
The initial cost for automation is high. The initial cost for automation is too high for the initial setup. It costs automated tool purchase, training ad maintenance of the test scripts. The unsatisfied customer base is high for automation testing their products. It should be ensured that the cost compensates for the testing results.
If UI is not fixed, do not a thing about automation: Before automating the user interface, it should strongly be determined that, whether the UI is changing extensively or the cost of the automated script maintenance is high or not.
Make sure that the application is stable enough: To automate the early development cycle unless or otherwise, it is an Agile environment, it would not be a good idea. It costs script maintenance costs very high.
Stop automating the tests which run once: Ensure that certain test cases might be running once and not included in the regression testing. Avoid automating such test modules.
4. Does Automation Testing Have Any Disadvantages?
Answer: Designing the tools and tests to run software through takes a lot of manual, human effort, though there are frameworks and tests ready-made for engineers to use. Even with automated testing, human error is still a factor – tools can be buggy, inefficient, costly, and sometimes even technologically limited in what kinds of tests they can run on their own.
5. Explain Load Testing On Websites?
Answer: To access a website, a user sends a “request” to that website’s server, and the server sends back a response in the form of the website you want to access. To load test a website, quality assurance engineers and automation engineers just need to multiply the number of responses sent to simulate different traffic loads. The web server’s response to the influx of virtual users can then be measured. This is used to determine performance issues and server capacity.
6. Does The Selenium Ide Have Any Drawbacks?
Answer: The Selenium IDE lacks conditional statements, logging and reporting functionality, loops, database testing, and it can not handle exceptions or automatically re-run tests that have failed. It also can’t take screenshots. Another downside is that it’s Firefox only. If the Selenium IDE is used in the Firefox browser’s side-bar, then the quality engineer can’t use it to record any actions undertaken by a user in a separate window.
7. How Do You Choose Which Automation Tool Is Best For Your Specific Scenario?
Answer:
To choose the proper automation testing tool, you must consider:
- the scope of the project
- the limitation of the tool
- how much the tool costs
- the tool’s usability and convenience
- the testing environment
- compatibility
- Project management and good judgment are important skills in software testing and quality assurance positions. Check out this course on IT project management to learn how to make good, effective decisions for your team.
8. Do you think that testing can be done only at the UI level?
Answer: Today as we are moving to Agile mode, testing is not limited to the UI layer. Early feedback is imperial for an agile project. If we concentrate only on the UI layer, we are waiting until the UI is developed and available to test. Rather we can test even before the UI is developed. We can directly test the APIs or the methods using tools like Cucumber and FitNesse.
In this way, we are giving the feedback much early and even are testing before the UI is developed. Following this approach will help us to test only the GUI aspect of small cosmetic changes or some validations on the UI and will help the developers by giving more time to fix the bugs.
9. How do you select which automation tool is best suited for you?
Answer:
Selecting the automation tool depends upon various factors like:
- The scope of the application which we want to automate
- Management overhead like cost and budget
- Time to learn and implement the tool
- Type of support available for the tool.
- Limitation of the tool
10. What are the various kinds of frameworks that can be used in software automation testing?
Answer:
- In software automation testing four kinds of frameworks are usually used
- Keyword-driven automation framework
- Data-driven automation framework
- Hybrid automation framework
- Modular automation framework
11. List down the primary features of a good automation tool?
Answer:
- Test Environment backing
- Easy to use
- Decent repairing ability
- Healthy object identification
- Object and Image analysis aptitudes
- Object identification
- Ability to test database
- Should be able to upkeep multiple frameworks
12. Can you explain data-driven testing?
Answer: Ordinarily, an application has to be tested with numerous sets of data. For example, a simple login screen, contingent on the user type, will give, unlike rights. For example, if the user is an admin he will have complete rights, while a user will have incomplete rights and support if he only has read-only support rights. In this situation, the testing steps are the same, but with different user ids and passwords. In data-driven testing, inputs to the system are delivered from data files such as Excel, CSV (comma-separated values), ODBC, etc. So the values are delivered from these sources and then test steps are performed by automated testing.
13. When will you automate a test?
Answer:
Automation is preferred in the following cases:
- Repetitive Tasks
- Smoke and Sanity Tests
- Test with multiple data set
- Regression test cases
- Usually, the decision is based on the ROI (Return on Investment)
14. What are the primary features of good automation tool?
Answer:
- Test Environment support and easy to use
- Good debugging facility
- Robust object identification
- Object and Image testing abilities
- Object identification
- Testing of database
- Support multiple frameworks
15. What criteria do you consider for automating a test?
Answer:
I would consider the following points to help me decide if a test should be automated:
How often does the test need to be executed? i.e. is that going to be a regression test? Sometimes the test will need to be executed once, but with a large set of data
How much time does automating this test will save me so that I can use my time in exploratory testing
How important is the test to the business; i.e. is the test scenario a typical user journey through the application
How complex is it to automate the test and how likely is it that the complexity doesn’t cause many false positives which increases results analysis time?
How likely is it that this test catches a defect?
How likely is it that a feature or functionality will break and what is the impact of it on the business? If it is high impact, then it should be automated to ensure it passes from release to release
16. What are the main attributes of test automation?
Answer:
The main attributes of test automation are:
- Maintainability
- Reliability
- Flexibility
- Efficiency
- Portability
- Robustness
- Usability
17. What is meant by the Automation framework?
Answer: The automation framework is a blend of assumptions, concepts, practices which provide support for automated software testing. The framework depends on the project needs, as there are no hard and fast rules for the automation framework.
If the application has a variety of functionality with little variations in terms of test data, ‘functional framework’ is suitable for software applications. For applications that have variety of functionality and more variations in test data, the ‘hybrid test automation framework’ is suitable for those applications.
18. What is Modular automation?
Answer: It involves the creation of small, independent scripts that represent the modules, sections, and functions of the application-under-test (AUT). These scripts are then used to construct larger tests to realize specific business scenarios.
Modular Testing Framework is suitable for the automation of large, stable applications.
19. What is the difference between Automation tools and Management tools?
Answer:
Automation tools:
- Interact with Software applications
- Execute our software applications
- Management tools:
- Does not interact with Software applications
- It is only for documentation and generation reports
20. What is a framework for automation testing?
Answer: A framework is an arrangement of the structure of the whole automation suite. It also refers to a guideline, if followed properly, it can result in a structure which is easy to sustain and develop.
These strategies include:
- Coding standards
- Managing the test data
- Sustaining and handling the elements (object repository in QTP)
- Management of environment files and properties file
- Reporting of data
- Managing logs
21. What all different approaches can be used for designing an automation solution?
Answer:
You can design a test automation solution founded on the following types of frameworks:
- Data-driven automation framework.
- Keyword-driven automation framework.
- Modular automation framework.
- Hybrid automation framework.
- Behavioral driven development framework.
22. What is ‘Software Testing’?
Answer: Software testing is the act of operating a system or application under control and then assessing their results. It is intentionally simulating a problem situation to work out a possible remedy in case a situation like that happens.
23. What should you do after finding a bug?
Answer: You need to report the bug and then assign it to developers that can take care of it. When you have fixed the problem, retest the fixes, decide the requirements for regression testing to be sure that no more problems are eventually caused by the fixes.
24. What are the attributes of a good Software QA engineer?
Answer: They should be able to comprehend the whole process of software development and how it blends with the organization’s goal and the business approach. Diplomacy and patience are highly required in the early phases of QA processes implementation. For inspections and reviews to be successful, the ability to identify problems and spot ‘what is missing’ is a must.
25. What is extreme programming and what has it got to do with testing?
Answer: Extreme programming otherwise known as ‘XP’ is a software development step taken by small teams working on projects that are susceptible to risk and also have requirements that are not steady. To carry out extreme testing, it is expected that the programmers should first write unit and functional test codes before the application code is written. It is also important to make the customer an important part of the project team and assist in developing scenarios that would enable you to conduct acceptance/black box testing.
26. Explain How Qtp Identifies Objects?
Answer: For each object class that QTP identifies, it has a set of properties stored. These include mandatory properties, which is essentially a description of any given object, which checks if it’s a child or parent object as well. Next, are the assistive properties, which QTP resorts to only if the mandatory properties are insufficient at identifying the object. If all else fails, QTP resorts, finally, to its ordinal identifier.
27. Can You List Some Technologies That Support Qtp?
Answer:
- .NET
- Delphi
- Web
- Java (Core)
- Java (Advanced)
- Windows Mobile
- Oracle
- SAP
- WPF
- Siebel
- PeopleSoft
- Flex
- Silverlight
28. What Is The Selenium Ide And What Is It Used For?
Answer: The Selenium IDE is an add-on for Firefox that includes numerous features for quality assurance and engineers to record and playback browser-based actions, such as typing and mouse clicks. Some of these particular features are: debugging functions, record/playback ability, user add-on capability. Users can speed up and slow down executions with the use of a built-in slider. They can also use the Selenium IDE as a side-bar, or as a separate pop-up window.
29. Is Automation Testing A Complete Replacement For Manual Software Testing?
Answer: No. Proper automation requires as little intervention from humans as possible since the tools used are built to run tests once they’re set up. As convenient as this might be, it should not be a complete replacement for manual testing – only for repetitive tasks like load testing, where thousands of virtual users are required. Engineers should not automate things like test scripts if those scripts can only be expected to run occasionally, nor should they automate code reviews, or bug testing for new builds of software that might require human interaction to detect specific issues. Large-scale, repetitive tasks are a better fit for automation.
30. What do you think holds testers back to do automation? Is there a way to overcome it?
Answer: The major hurdle for testers is to learn programming/coding when they want to automate. Since testers do not code, adapting to coding is a bit challenging for testers. We can overcome it by:
- Collaborating with developers when automating
- Considering that automation is the responsibility of the whole team and not only of the testers
- Giving a dedicated time and focus on automation.
- Getting proper management support.
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31. What is the difference between Testing Techniques and Testing Tools?
Answer:
Testing technique: This is a procedure for safeguarding that some features of the application system or unit functions correctly, there may be a few techniques but there are many tools.
Testing Tools: This is an apparatus for executing a test process. The tool is a reserve to the tester, but it is inadequate to conduct testing
32. What are the pre-requisites to start automation testing?
Answer: The first step is to segregate the different test cases that are to be automated, followed by preparing test data as per the needs of the test cases. Reusable functions need to be written which are frequently used in those test cases. Later test scripts are prepared by using reusable functions and apply loops and conditions wherever necessary.
In a nutshell, the following are the pre-requisites for starting automation testing:
- Build should always be stable
- Get the functionalities to repeat
- Filtering the automated test cases
33. What kind of tests should NOT be automated?
Answer: This interview question is similar to the previous question but focuses on which tests Not to be automated and left for manual testing. Possible answers can be:
Usability Testing – at times this can be an impossible task to perform by automation as the computer cannot efficiently judge if the system is of any use to its users
Tests that only need to be executed once – unless the same test needs to be executed for a large dataset then it makes sense to automate
Tests without predictable results – test automation should give us confidence in the results of the tests. If there are intermittent failures then the tests cannot be reliable and cannot be dependent on
Tests that need to be verified visually
Tests that need to be executed quickly. At first, writing an automated test takes longer. If we want a quick check, we should test manually, however, if that test is a good one which should be run regularly, then it should be automated in time
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34. What is Hybrid automation?
Answer: Hybrid Testing Framework allows data-driven scripts to take advantage of the powerful libraries and utilities that usually accompany a keyword-driven architecture. The framework utilities can make the data-driven scripts more compact and less prone to failure. Tests are fully scripted in a Hybrid Testing Framework thus increasing the automation effort. Hybrid Testing Framework also implements extensive error and unexpected windows handling. It is used for automation of medium to large applications with long shelf life.
35. How do you plan test automation?
Answer:
- Prepare the automation Test plan
- Identify the scenario
- Record the scenario
- Enhance the scripts by inserting checkpoints and Conditional Loops
- Incorporated Error Handler
- Debug the script
- Fix the issue
- Rerun the script and report the result.
36. On what factors can you map the success of automation testing?
Answer: By subsequent criteria, the accomplishment of automation testing can be recorded
Defect Recognition Ratio
Automation implementation time and time savings to discharge the product
The decrease in Labour & other prices
37. What are the types of framework used in software automation testing?
Answer:
In software automation testing four types of the framework used are:
- Data-driven automation framework
- Keyword-driven automati4on framework
- Modular automation framework
- Hybrid automation framework
38. What is data-driven automation?
Answer: It is typically an application-independent automation framework designed to process our tests. These tests are developed as data tables using a keyword vocabulary that is independent of the test automation tool used to execute them. This keyword vocabulary should also be suitable for manual testing.
Data-driven automation means driven by a different set of data using the data given in excel or notepad. It is called the DDA.
39. What is Keyword driven automation?
Answer: Keyword-driven testing is a type of functional automation testing framework which is also known as table-driven testing or action word based testing.
In Keyword-driven testing, we use a table format, usually a spreadsheet, to define keywords or action words for each function that we would like to execute.
40. Does every software project need testers?
Answer: This solely depends on the context or size of the project, the methodology of development, risks involved, and the experience and skills of the developers. Generally, every project would need testers, except in some cases. A project that is non-trivial sized or with non-trivial risks would need a testing staff. But whereby the project is for a short term, low risk, small, and with programmers that are highly experienced that are making use of test-first development or unit testing, such project may not need a test engineer for it to do well.
41. What is a ‘test plan’? What is a ‘test case’?
Answer: A software project test plan is a document that explains the objective, approach, focus, and scope of software testing. A test case, on the other hand, is a document that explains an action, input, or event, and a response that is expected, to help decide if an application’s feature is functioning properly.
42. What are 5 common problems in the software development process?
Answer:
- Unworkable schedule
- Requirements changes
- Inadequate communication
- Insufficient testing
- Poor requirements
43. What are the 5 common software development problems solutions?
Answer:
- Practicable schedule
- Clear communication among the project team members
- Firm requirements
- Clearness of requirements
- Sufficient testing
44. What is ‘good code’? What is ‘good design’?
Answer: ‘Good code’ is a code that works well, has no bug, can be read, and can be maintained. The good internal design signifies a software code with a clear, understandable, modifiable, and maintainable overall structure. It has to be robust with the capacity for adequate error handling and status logging and works properly when it is executed. Good functional design refers to an application with functionality that one can trace back to the requirements of the end-user and customers.
45. What is system testing?
Answer: It is a series of tests aimed at making sure that the modified program can interact properly with other components of the system.
46. How can you introduce new Software QA processes to an existing Organization?
Answer: This is usually determined by the organization’s size as well as the risks involved. If it is a small project or group, it may be better to use a more ad-hoc process, depending on the customer and project type. It can also be done via incremental self-managed team approaches.
47. What steps are needed in developing and running a software test?
Answer: Get the requirements, functional design, and plan for the internal design, and other relevant documents.
Get budget and the schedule conditions
Decide project framework
Recognize risks
Decide testing approaches, process, test sets, test data
Carry out test
Carry out reviews and evaluations
Sustain and keep documents up to date
48. What Are The Differences Between Open Source Tools, Vendor Tools, And In-house Tools?
Answer: Open source tools are free to use frameworks and applications. Engineers build the tool and have the source code available for free on the internet for other engineers to use. Vendor tools are developed by companies that come with licenses to use, and often cost money. Because they are developed by an outside source, technical support is often available for use. Example vendor tools include WinRunner, SilkTest, Rational Robot, QA Director, QTP, LR, QC, RFT, and RPT. An in-house tool is a tool that a company builds for its use, rather than purchasing vendor tools or using open source tools.
49. What Are The Different Types Of Scripting Techniques For Automation Testing?
Answer: Test automation scripting techniques include key and data-driven techniques, shared, structured, and linear.
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50. Can you achieve 100% automation?
Answer: 100% automation would be difficult to achieve because there would be many edge test cases and some cases that are executed seldom. Automating these cases which are not executed that often will not add value to the automated suite.
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