QA Manager/Test Lead Interview Question and Answer

1. What do you expect out of this role?

Ans. This question measures your compatibility with the role. As you have applied for the role, you should have a good understanding of the major responsibilities associated with it and what you expect from it in the future.

2. Did you handle a team of test engineers or A professionals in your earlier role?

Ans. As you are interviewing for a test lead position it is evident that you have some amount of experience in handling a team or have similar experiences. You need to give a detail on how you coordinated with your team members and clients to deliver successful projects.

3. What do you think of test leads writing test cases?

Ans. The right answer is to say that you feel that the test lead should write test cases like any other member of the team.

4. How do you set your team’s objectives?

Ans. If you prefer to set individual objectives for each member of the team, mention that you set them according to the knowledge and experience levels. This is how we can handle the project more efficiently as a team.

5. How familiar are you with the industry-standard testing practices?

Ans. Explain all the proper practices that you follow in your existing organization and how will you handle it similarly for the organization that you are interviewing for.

6. What are the ways you ensure that the team members receive proper training?

Ans. Get feedback from all the team members on their strengths and weaknesses to make a note of what type of training is necessary for the team. Also, new members who join the team should be trained on time so as to be inducted as quickly as possible.

7. What will be your criteria for hiring team members?

Ans. The criteria for hiring team members are 1) his/her technical strength is as per project requirements, 2) his/her attitude towards the profile he will be hiring for, and 3) will he/she be a good fit with the rest of the team members?

8. Which testing tools are you familiar with?

Ans. This is one of the most important Test lead interview questions. As a test lead, you should be familiar with some of the most popular testing tools. You need to explain how you use it and what are its advantages as per the project requirements, cost of using the tool, and ease of use.

9. Are you familiar with automation and what do you think of it?

Ans. Automation is becoming an important part of software testing nowadays and you can get away without having any knowledge of it. You should be well-prepared for this Test Lead interview question and make it a positive answer as automation is going to be the future.

10. Do you know what Requirement Traceability Matrix is? What are its uses?

Ans. The Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) is a document that links requirements to test cases. Its uses are 1) to ensure that all the application requirements are tested in the verification process and 2) to check test coverage.

11. What is a Test Plan?

Ans. A Test Plan is a document detailing the objectives, resources, and processes for a specific test and contains a detailed understanding of the eventual workflow.

12. Name the different types of Test Plans?

Ans. There are three types of Test Plans: 1) Master Test Plan, 2) Testing Level Specific Test Plan and 3) Testing Type Specific Test Plan.

13. What are the risks that should be avoided for a testing project?

Ans. One should avoid the following risks during a testing project: 1) human resource risk (resource crunch), 2) project schedule risk (missed deadlines), 3) strategy risk (exceeding allocated budgets) and 4) project definition risk.

14. What are the good practices that you follow?

Ans. Some of the good practices for a successful project are proper documentation process, high standards of reviewing, recognition of outstanding performers, focusing on team building, and making sure there is a continuous scope of learning.

15. Have you been involved in test estimation?What are the techniques that you use?

Ans. If yes, explain how you come with the test estimation scenarios and the techniques that you follow to improve the processes over time.

16. What are your key achievements in your current organization?

Ans. Have you completed a project well before the deadline or have you managed a difficult project with great efficiency? Mention all your achievements no matter how insignificant you think it is.

17. What is the difference between Agile and Scrum? Which one do you prefer?

Ans. Scrum is actually a type of Agile framework but does not provide detailed instructions on what needs to be done; rather most of it is dependent on the team. The Agile methodology supports incremental and iterative work cadences known as Sprints.

If you prefer that there is a leader who maintains the direction by assigning tasks then Agile is perfect otherwise Scrum provides the advantage of adjusting the project’s direction based on completed work.

18. What is Configuration Management?

Ans. Configuration Management covers the processes used to coordinate, control, and track test artifacts.

19. What are the informal reviews? Do you document informal reviews?

Ans. An informal review is a process of checking defects without running the code. No, informal reviews do not require documentation.

20. What is a three-point estimation?

Ans. In a three-point estimation, three different values are calculated based on previous experience. These are 1) the best-case estimate, 2) the most likely estimate and 3) the worst-case estimate.

21. What are the key challenges of software testing?

Ans. This is one of the commonly asked Test Lead interview questions. Some of the key challenges of software testing are:

• Testing the entire application: It is difficult to test the entire application as there are many test combinations. It will lead to a delay in shipping the product if you test all the combinations.
• Communication with developers: Developers or testers may not always agree with each other on some points.
• Regression testing: Managing the changes in current functionality and previous working functionality checks could be difficult.
• Time constraint: You may have multiple tasks related to quality that need to be completed within a specified time.
• Priority: With time constraints, it sometimes becomes difficult for the testers to decide which test to execute first. 

Some other challenges include deciding on the right process and identifying the non-testable requirements.

22. What steps are followed to create a test script?

Ans. Below are the steps to create a test script:

1. Understand the Application under test by reading the requirements related documents other references, such as the previous version of the application.
2. Make a list of the areas to test for the AUT. In this step, you will identify ‘What’ to test. 
3. Determine ‘How’ to test them.  Write various steps on how to test a particular feature, determine the data that will be entered, and the expected outcome.

23. Why testing is necessary?

Ans. Testing is an important step in the software cycle as it helps to identify defects, mistakes, and bugs before the delivery to the client. Testing ensures the quality of the software and produces a more cost-efficient end-product. 

24. What do you mean by PDCA Cycle?

Ans. PDCA stands for Plan Do Check Act. The PDCA Cycle is a 4-stage problem-solving technique for conducting a quality check. It focuses on the continuous improvement of processes and products. In simple terms, it is a continuous loop of planning, doing, checking, and acting that is useful for testing improvement measures.

25. What are the key elements in a Bug Report?

Ans. A good bug report must be concise and specific and should have: 

• Title 
• Unique and clearly specified bug number/name
• Steps to reproduce the bug
• A summary describing the defect and the observed failure
• A description that explaining the steps to follow to reproduce the defect and the expected outcome.
• Date and time when the defect occurred or reported
• Bug Priority / Severity
• Platform & Version
• Attachment/evidence of the failure to help the reviewer to understand the defect better

26. What is the difference between Retesting And Regression Testing?

Ans. The differences between Retesting And Regression Testing are: 

27. What Is Exploratory Testing?

Ans. Often described as simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution, Exploratory Testing is an approach that involves testing software without any specific plans or schedules. It is carried out when there an early iteration is needed. It requires minimum planning and maximum test execution. During software testing, the tester discovers and learns novel things that when combined with experience and creativity produce new good tests to run.

28. What are the severity and priority of a defect?

Ans. Defect Severity means how adversely the defect has impacted the functionality of an application. 

Defect Priority refers to the order in which the defects will be fixed. It is the urgency of the defect from the business point of view. If the impact of the bug will be higher on the business, then a higher priority will be assigned to it. Bugs could be under different priority and severity combinations

• High Priority and High Severity
• High Priority and Low Severity
• Low Priority and Low Severity
• Low Priority and High Severity

29. How would you choose a Testing tool for your project?

Ans. The steps to select the right testing tool for a project are: 

1. Identify and understand the requirement for the project
2. Evaluate the tools and vendors that meet the requirements
3. Consider budget and estimate cost and benefit 
4. Make the final decision

30. Explain the difference between Smoke testing and Sanity Testing.

Ans. The differences between Smoke testing and Sanity Testing are: 

31. What do you think is the best approach to start A in a project?

Ans. The best approach to start A is from the beginning of the project. This will help the team to do proper planning of the processes that need to be followed. It will ensure that the end product meets the customer’s quality expectations. A also helps in starting communication between different teams.

32. What soft/people skills should a Test Lead/A Manager have?

Ans. Besides technical expertise, Test Leads and A managers must work on their ability to create and work with a creative test team where each member is equally valuable for the organization. This would require them to have the following soft skills:

• Effective communication skills 
• Ability to solve problems effectively
• Adaptable and influential
• Strong negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• Ability to motivate team members
• Team Player

33. What are the different ways to manage or mitigate risks in a Test Project?

Ans. The following are the four ways to manage or mitigate the risk: 

• Avoidance: avoid the risk factor that is involved
• Acceptance & Sharing: Accept the risk and develop a planned budget for the risks involved and collaborate with others to share responsibility
• Reduction: Develop a mitigation plan to decrease the impact of risks
• Risk transfer: Transfer the risk to another resource or party

34. How can you determine the quality of the test execution?

Ans. You can determine the quality of test execution by: 

• Defect rejection ratio: (No. of defects rejected/ total no. of defects raised) X 100
• Defect leakage ratio: (No. of defect missed/total defects of software) X 100

A smaller value of DRR and DLR indicates a better quality of test execution.

35. What are the best practices for test estimation?

Ans. This is one of the frequently asked Test Lead interview questions.

The following are some of the best practices for test estimation:

• Add reasonable buffer time: It can help you to deal with a delay caused due to unexpected reasons. 
• Account resource planning in estimation: Make realistic estimation after considering the important factors, like the absence of a human resource.
• Use the past experience reference: It will help you to prepare good estimates and avoid all the possible obstacles that are most likely to happen.
• Stick to your estimate: Your estimation may go wrong also. Therefore, you should re-check and make modifications when needed.

36. What is the difference between Assert and Verify commands in test automation?

Ans. Both Assert and Verify commands are used to check if the code conditions are true. The difference is what happens next. There are some differences between Assert and Verify:

• If the Assert condition is true then the program control will execute the next test step. If the command fails, the execution will stop and further test steps will not be executed. There are two types of assets, namely Hard and Soft Asserts.
• When a Verify command fails, the test will continue executing the rest of the code and logging the failure. The Verify command is used to check non-critical things.

37. What is the difference between functional and non-functional testing?

Ans. Functional Testing

Functional testing tests the system against the functional requirements and specifications. It is concerned with the result of processing. Each functionality is tested by providing a test input, expecting the output, and comparing the actual output with the expected output.

Non-functional Testing

Non-functional testing verifies the non-functional requirements of the application (all the aspects which are not tested in functional testing). It tests whether the behavior of the system is as per the requirement or not. It tests various aspects of the software such as load times, stress, and overall performance.

The table below lists some of the major differences between Functional and Non-functional testing:

38. What is the difference between Beta and Pilot Testing?

Ans. Beta Testing

Beta testing is done when the project is about to release. The application is given to the end-users to check whether the application meets the user’s requirements or not. It is done before the final release when the development and testing are essentially completed. The Beta version is released to a limited number of end-users to obtain feedback on the product quality. The purpose of Beta testing is to identify defects and improve the quality of the application.

Pilot Testing

It is the real-world testing that is performed by a group of end-users before an application’s full deployment. A group of users uses the application in totality before the final launch. The purpose of Pilot testing is to evaluate the feasibility, time, cost, risk, and performance of the project.

The following are some of the differences between Beta and Pilot Testing

39. Explain bug leakage and bug release.

Ans. Bug leakage is when the bug is discovered by the end-users and not detected by the testing team while testing the software.

Bug release is when the software or application is released with a set of known bug(s). These bugs usually have low priority and severity. It is done when the company can afford the existence of a bug in the released software rather than the time or cost for fixing it in that particular version. Typically, these bugs are mentioned in the release notes.

40. What are the different states in a Defect/Bug Life Cycle?

Ans. Below are the different states involved in a defect/bug life cycle:

41. What is Bug triage?

Ans. Bug triage refers to the process of prioritizing each bug based on its severity, frequency, and risk. The A team validates the severities of the bug, makes the required changes, finalizes the resolution of the bugs, and assigns resources.

Defect/Bug Triage Process:

1. Defect Review
2. Assessment
3. Assignment

42. What is the difference between Verification and Validation?

Ans. Verification involves checking if the software achieves its goal without any bugs. On the other hand, Validation checks if the software product is up to the mark. Below are some of the major differences between Verification and Validation.