Software Quality and Java Automation Engineer Survival Guide: Basic Concepts, Self Review, Interview Preparation (500+ Questions & Answers) preview

Software Quality

and

Java Automation Engineer

Survival Guide

(A completely packaged guide with right skills)

500+ Questions & Answers

Basic Concepts + Self Review  + Interview Preparation

This book is aimed to help most of the software professions and especially to Quality Engineering folks who don’t have much support in terms of books and training compared to developers. This book should be helpful for anyone to understand the basic testing concepts, interview preparation in getting a new QA automation engineer job, or switching from another discipline to Software testing. If you feel otherwise, please feel free to contact at jagadesh.munta@everydayon.com or swqualityautosurvivalguide@gmail.com  so that I can improve and take care of it as updates and new editions.

The goal is to help you.

Jagadesh Babu Munta

Contents

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

SKILL#1. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC)

1.     What is Software?

2.     What is SDLC? Why do you need such models? What are different models?

3.     How is SDLC related to Testing?

4.     What is Waterfall model? What are different phases involved?

5.     What is Agile Scrum process? Can you describe at a high level?

6.     When does the testing activity gets started in each development model?

7.     What is meant by standup meetings in the scrum process? What are the three questions (typically) you need to answer in Agile Scrum process?

8.     Who is Scrum Master? What is his/her role and responsibilities?

9.     Are you aware of any Agile tools?

10.   What is a sprint? What is a typical duration for a sprint?

11.   What is meant by product backlog?

12.   What is a sprint backlog?

13.   Where do you add the changed requirements? Whether in a sprint backlog or product backlog?

14.   Can you change a sprint backlog during a sprint?

15.   What is a use case?

16.   What is a user story?

17.   What is Test Driven Development(TDD) process?

18.   What are the advantages and disadvantages of waterfall model?

19.   What are advantages and disadvantages of Agile Scrum process?

20.   What is the typical team size in different SDLC models?

21.   Which SDLC model suits for rapidly changing requirements?

22.   Which model suits for incremental product delivery?

23.   What is meant by refactoring? Where do you typically do?

24.   What is meant by alpha and beta products? Who are the consumers? What is the main objective?

25.   What is a PRD (Product Requirements Document) or BRD (Business Requirements Document)? What it contains and who owns this?

26.   What is a functional specification? What it contains and who owns this?

27.   What is meant by soft code freeze (SCF)? When does it happen in the SDLC process?

28.   What is meant by hard code freeze (HCF)? When does it happen in the development process?

29.   What is product release candidate (RC)? What is a release?

30.   What is release notes? Who drives this?

31.   What is a release criteria? Who sets this up and who has to follow?

32.   What is meant by a release showstopper? When does it happen?

33.   Who are all project stakeholders? What are those teams?

34.   What is a test cycle at product level?

35.   How does the QA team track the weekly status or progress?

36.   What is Go/No-Go for product release?

SKILL#2. SOFTWARE QUALITY CONCEPTS

37.   What is meant by software Testing?

38.   What is meant by software quality?

39.   What is a software bug or defect?

40.   Why do you need to Test the software? What happens if you don’t test separately than the developer?

41.   How Quality Engineering different from Quality Assurance or simply execution?

42.   What is the need for having a separate Quality Engineering Team?

43.   Can we eliminate all bugs in a given product through extensive testing? What should we do?

44.   What are functional requirements and nonfunctional requirements?

45.   What are the different types of Testing? Can you list some?

46.   What is meant by white box testing? List down some testing types for white box testing. Who does this type of testing?

47.   What is meant by black box testing? List down some of the testing types for Black box testing. Who does this type of Testing?

48.   Differentiate white box vs. black box testing.

49.   What is Unit Testing? What is its relation to whitebox and black box testing.

50.   What is Functional Testing? What is its relation to whitebox and black box testing? Who does this testing?

51.   What is Security Testing? Is it functional or nonfunctional requirement testing?

52.   What is Regression Testing? When and how often do you run these tests?

53.   What is Performance Testing? Who does this testing - QA or separate team?

54.   What is a Test Plan? Describe briefly the contents of a Test Plan. Have you ever written a Test plan?

55.   What is a Test design and specification? Describe briefly contents of Test Spec or Test Design spec. Have you ever written a Test Spec?

56.   What is meant by a Test scenario? Where do you put test scenarios?

57.   Can you describe the bug life cycle? What are different states of a bug?

58.   What is meant by bug Priority? Who sets the priority of a bug? Can we change it after filed the bug?

59.   What is meant by downgrading a bug and upgrading a bug?

60.   What is meant by bug Severity? Who sets the severity of a bug? Can we change it after filed the bug?

61.   How do you file a bug? What details would be added? Give an example.

62.   What is Stress or load testing? What is longevity testing? How does stress and longevity testing are related? What kinds of bugs can be found? Who does this testing - QA or Dev or any other team?

63.   What is System testing? Who does this testing? What are the key elements in system testing?

64.   What is a topology? How does it relate to testing?

65.   What is High Availability(HA) testing? What are different types of failures? Who does this testing?

66.   What is meant by code coverage? What is its main purpose? When does this activity happen during the product life cycle? Is it a testing activity? Who lead this? What kind of tests executed?

67.   What are different code coverage tools for Java?

68.   How does the Quality is being tracked? What are different levels?

69.   What is meant by testing artifact? What are different artifacts?

70.   What is the test development process? What are key steps?

71.   What is the difference between manual testing and automated testing?

72.   What is the test execution process? What do you need to focus?

73.   What is smoke testing? When do you run? Who run these tests?

74.   What is Basic Acceptance Testing (BAT)? Who and when do you execute BAT tests?

75.   How do you sign-off from QA? What do you do?

SKILL#3. OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING & SYSTEM (OOPS)

76.   What are OOP and OOPS?

77.   What are fundamental principles or characteristics or properties of OOP?

78.   What are the benefits or advantages of using OOP?

79.   What is an Object? What it contains?

80.   What is a Class? Why do we need?

81.   What is an instance?

82.   What is a method?

83.   What is meant by object state?

84.   What is Interface? Why do we need?

85.   What is Abstraction? Generalization? Concreteness?

86.   What is Encapsulation? How can be achieved?

87.   What is Polymorphism? How can be achieved?

88.   How do you differentiate Object Oriented Programming with Procedural Programming?

89.   What are the differences between Object-Oriented vs. Object-based programming

90.   What is Abstract Class?

91.   What is Inheritance? What are the benefits? What are different types of Inheritance? Describe them.

92.   What is the difference between Abstract class and an Interface?

93.   How do you create Objects?

94.   What is a constructor? What is a destructor?

95.   What is default constructor? What is parametric constructor?

96.   What is overloading? What are different types?

97.   What is overriding? How to do?

98.   What is data hiding? Why do you need it?

99.   What is “this” and “super” keywords w.r.t objects?

100.                   What is meant by method signature? Does it include return type?

101.                   Can an abstract method be private? Why or why not?

102.                   What are the class relationships?

103.                   What is UML and why do you need?

104.                   What is UML notation for relationships?

SKILL#4. XML

105.                   What is XML? Is it a standard?

106.                   What are the main objectives of XML?

107.                   What is the structure of XML?

108.                   How do you define the structure of XML? How do you write XML?

109.                   What are the differences between XML and HTML?

110.                   What is meant by well-formed XML?

111.                   What is meant by validation of XML?

112.                   What is DTD? What is XML Schema or XSD? What are the differences?

113.                   What are some of the popular techniques to parse XML files?

114.                   What are XML declaration and processing instruction in XML?

115.                   What is namespace  in XML?

116.                   What are real applications of XML?

SKILL#5. XPATH

117.                   What is XPath? Why does it matter?

118.                   Is it a standard specification? Who defined?

119.                   How do you represent XML for navigation?

120.                   What are different node types in XPath?

121.                   What are different node relations?

122.                   What is meant by atomic node value or value?

123.                   What is the XPath expression for selecting an element from root node?

124.                   What is the XPath for selecting any node under the tree?

125.                   What is the XPath for selecting a node with an attribute?

126.                   What is a predicate? What is its purpose?

127.                   What is the XPath for selecting the first node? And also last but one node? Or at a particular position?

128.                   What is the XPath for selecting nodes with expected attribute value?

129.                   What is the xPath wild characters to match any node and nodes with any attribute?

130.                   How to select several XPaths in a single selection/expression?

131.                   What is axis? Why do you need? Please provide few expressions with axes.

132.                   What are different XPath operators?

133.                   What are some of the inbuilt/standard functions in XPath?

134.                   What are different XPath evaluators?

135.                   Where do you use XPath in real applications?

SKILL#6. JSON

136.                   What is JSON? How does JSON format look like (snippet)?

137.                   Is JSON a programming language? Or a protocol?  Or a message format? Is it language dependent?

138.                   What are the key advantages with JSON over XML format?

139.                   Where do you use JSON?

140.                   What is the HTTP header used for passing the JSON data?

141.                   How do you process (parse, transform, generate, query) the JSON text?

142.                   How do you query the data from JSON file from shell command or in a simple script?

SKILL#7. SOURCE CODE CONTROL SYSTEM(SCCS)/SCM - SVN & GIT

143.                   What is source code control system (SCCS) and SCM? Why do you need?

144.                   Describe the key elements in SCM such as repository, workspace, versioning?

145.                   What do you store in the repository?

146.                   What is source code? Why is it important? What happens if you keep the code at individual machines?

147.                   What are the primary functions of SCCS software?

148.                   What are different popular SCCS software available?

149.                   What is meant by the checkout, check-in or commit, merge, delete, log, status?

150.                   What is meant by the trunk or mainline? Branching? And tagging?

151.                   What is meant by merging conflicts? What happens if you don’t resolve the conflicts? How do you resolve the conflicts?

152.                   Can you describe SVN? What are the supported protocols?

153.                   What kind of architecture/design used in SVN? Any other architectures?

154.                   What do you need for interacting with SVN server?

155.                   What is the svn command for checkout workspace?

156.                   What are the svn commands to do a fresh checkout,  check-in or commit all files in the current directory?

157.                   What is the command to see the list of files modified locally?

158.                   What is the svn command to see the history of changes done on a particular file?

159.                   What is the svn command to see the differences between the locally changed file vs. file in the repository?

160.                   Which svn plugin used in Eclipse?

161.                   Can multiple users checkout and check-in in parallel? Is there any lock?

162.                   What are the key features that you need for any version control systems like Git?

163.                   What are the typical steps to work with Git?

SKILL#8. UNIX/LINUX OS

164.                   What is an Operating System (OS)? Brief on its typical functions.

165.                   What are the different OS architecture types?

166.                   What is meant by a Platform?

167.                   What is Unix/Linux and how is it different from Windows?

168.                   How do you see Linux and windows differences at usage level?

169.                   What are different parts of linux OS?

170.                   How do you connect to a remote unix/linux machine?

171.                   How do you search given string or word in a file?

172.                   How do you run a command or process in the background? How do you bring it to the foreground?

173.                   What is the command to find running processes and process ids (PID)?

174.                   What is the command to kill a particular process id?

175.                   What is the command to list the hidden files?

176.                   What is meant by file permissions? How to set the permissions? What is meant by 644?

177.                   Why do you get the error ‘command not found’ while executing a command/file (with right directory path)? How to make it work?

178.                   What is the command to see the contents of a file? How to pause after each page filled?

179.                   What is the command to get first 10 lines of a file? And getting first 5 lines?

180.                   What is the command to get last 10 lines of a file? And getting last 5 lines?

181.                   What is the command to monitor a running log file (such as a tomcat server.log or other file where content is getting modified all the time)?

182.                   What permission to be set to a directory so that ‘cd dir’ command would work?

183.                   What is meant by pipeline (|)? Where do you use?

184.                   What is meant by symbolic link and the command to create a symbolic link to a file or directory?

185.                   How do you find given file and directory sizes?

186.                   How do you find a file in a given directory?

187.                   What is ‘vi’ editor? Describe on how to edit files (insert mode, save, copy lines, paste lines, delete lines, etc.)?

188.                   What is an alias? How do you set an alias and how to remove alias?

189.                   How do you count lines, words, and bytes in a file?

190.                   What is the command to check which user being used in the prompt?

191.                   What is a ‘touch’ command do? Where do you use?

192.                   What is the file separator character and path separator character in unix/linux?

193.                   What is the kernel? What is the command to see the kernel version?

194.                   What is the command to see the machine name or hostname?

195.                   How to find the OS release version?

196.                   How do you see the system details like total memory(RAM), processors and monitor the processes?

197.                   How do you redirect the output of a command to a file (such as log file)?

198.                   How do you append text to a file without overwriting the existing content?

199.                   What is the command to pause the screen scrolling temporarily and resume again?

200.                   How do you suspend a running process? And then send to the background or bring to the foreground?

201.                   What is a ‘tar’ command? How to use it and how to untar a file?

202.                   Write a single command to count all java files in a given directory and have a word ‘test’.

203.                   Write a command to get the 3rd word (separated by comma) of a string in a variable.

204.                   What is a sudo command? Why do you need?

205.                   What is a ping command and how it helps in checking the host reachability?

206.                   What is curl command and why do you need?

207.                   How do you write associative arrays in bash?

208.                   How do you run a command on the terminal without terminating when the shell closed or terminal closed?

209.                   How to see the help for commands in unix/linux?

210.                   What is a shell script? Write a script to do 1) Given Java code compilation and execution of class 2) Print hostname and how many java files are there in a given directory.

SKILL#9. JAVA

211.                   What is Java? What are benefits of Java language?

212.                   What is Java Platform? Why it is called a platform?

213.                   What are key features of Java?

214.                   Is Java language cross-platform?

215.                   What is JVM? Describe more on this.

216.                   What is JRE? Describe more on this.

217.                   What is JDK? Describe more on this.

218.                   Does JVM know about Java language? If yes, how much or what API it knows? If not, then what it can do?

219.                   What is the relation between JDK, JRE and JVM?

220.                   Where to get the Java or JDK?

221.                   Could you describe in general how is the Java code development process or lifecycle?

222.                   What is meant by compilation? Why do you need to do?

223.                   How do you compile the Java code?

224.                   What is the file extension to be used for Java source code?

225.                   What is meant by WORA?

226.                   What is the Java program’s runnable format?

227.                   What is the class file structure?

228.                   How to determine the java and javac versions?

229.                   How do you run Java programs using the command line?

230.                   How do you resolve classes dependency during compilation and runtime? What are different ways?

231.                   What is a Java package? Why do you use?

232.                   How do you package the classes into a single file? What is the format of the file?

233.                   What do you set in the CLASSPATH (or) -cp (or) -classpath options? Like class file path/class files directory path/jar files directory path/exact jar file path?

234.                   What is JVM stack? When does this be created?

235.                   What is StackOverflowError? When do you get it and how to resolve?

236.                   What is OutofMemoryError? When do you get this and how to resolve?

237.                   What is ClassNotFoundException? When do you get this and how to resolve?

238.                   What is JVM heap? When does it gets created?

239.                   What is Garbage Collection? What is its role in JVM?

240.                   Does the heap storage have to be contiguous?

241.                   What is a variable? Where do you define?

242.                   What is meant by variable assignment and initialization?

243.                   What are different types of variables?

244.                   What is a static variable, and its scope?  How do you reference it?

245.                   What is an instance variable and its scope?  How do you reference?

246.                   Are all non-static variables are instance variables?

247.                   What is a local variable, and its scope? How do you reference?

248.                   What are the differences between static variable and instance variable?

249.                   What is a field? How is it same or different (or same) from other types of  variables?

250.                   What is a data type? Where do you use?

251.                   What are the default values for instance or static variables?

252.                   What is meant by Parameter? How is it different from a variable or field?

253.                   What are different techniques to pass the parameter values from caller to callee method?

254.                   What kind of parameter passing technique is supported in Java?

255.                   How does the “Pass by value” works?

256.                   How does the “Pass by reference” works?

257.                   What are the differences between “Pass by value” and “Pass by reference”? Please give an example.

258.                   What is a literal? Any examples?

259.                   What is an expression?

260.                   What are the unary & binary operators?

261.                   What are prefix & suffix unary operators? What are the differences?

262.                   What is a statement? What are different kinds of statements?

263.                   Can we have an empty statement? How do  you write an empty statement?

264.                   What is a block? Can we have an empty block? Do we need to have ";" at the end for a block?

265.                   Where do you use block statements?

266.                   What are looping statements? Could you briefly explain?

267.                   How do you represent infinite loops with “for”, “while” or “do-while” statements?

268.                   What is meant by branching? What are different branching statements? Where do you use?

269.                   What is the purpose of switch statement? How do you write switch statement?

270.                   How do you write an interface? Can you implement multiple interfaces from single class?

271.                   How do you write abstract class? Can you extend from multiple classes?

272.                   What are the differences between an interface and abstract classes?

273.                   When do you use interfaces and abstract classes?

274.                   How do you write constructors?

275.                   Can you use a default constructor without defining it in a class? Please explain why or why not?

276.                   In class, if you have defined a parametric constructor only, then can you construct the objects with default constructor? In this context, does java provides the default constructor?

277.                   What is an inner class? What it represents in OOP? Describe more on nested classes?

278.                   How does the generated class look like for an inner class?

279.                   What is meant by access modifier? Where do you use? What are different access modifiers?

280.                   How do you provide access when you have private access members?

281.                   Can you assign multiple access modifiers to a single member?

282.                   What is final keyword significance? Where do you use?

283.                   Can you define a private constructor? If yes, why do you do?

284.                   What is a Java exception? Could you please brief on different types of exception?

285.                   How is the Exception and Error classes tree?

286.                   How to handle Java exceptions? Which exception to handle first when multiple exceptions to be caught?

287.                   What are the differences between checked exceptions and unchecked/runtime exceptions?

288.                   How to resolve when there is an exception stacktrace?

289.                   How to raise exceptions?

290.                   How to create a new custom or user defined checked exception?

291.                   What is a conditional operator, “?:”?

292.                   How and where to use “for-each” statement?

293.                   What is “enum” data type and how to use?

294.                   How to write a recursion method? What is the core advantage if it? Where to pay attention?

295.                   What are the different Java I/O classes?

296.                   What are Java Collection and Java Collection frameworks?

297.                   What are the advantages of Java Collections?

298.                   What are the core interfaces in Collection framework?

299.                   What are the common methods in the Collection (interface)?

300.                   What is Set interface, and its implementation classes?

301.                   What is List interface, and its implementation classes?

302.                   What are different algorithmic methods available in the List collection?

303.                   Could you explain the Map collection?

304.                   How should you write the classes (the rules to be followed) in order to use custom Java beans as elements in a collection?

305.                   If there is a requirement where a million records should be read from DB and would like to make them unique and sorting. Which collection data structure is appropriate?

306.                   If there is a requirement where some kind of paired objects to be stored, then which collection data structure is appropriate?

307.                   How to choose a specific Collection data structure? What are different performance characteristics (Big O-complexity)?

308.                   What is JDBC? Could you please explain about different JDBC driver types.

309.                   Could you please explain end-to-end steps in a typical JDBC program?

310.                   What is JDBC URL or Connect string? Can you give examples?

311.                   How to create a datasource in WebLogic?

SKILL#10. ANT

312.                   What is Apache’s ANT? What are the core elements?

313.                   Why and where do you use? Any alternatives?

314.                   How do you design your project workspace and how do you build the project? What do you write?

315.                   Is ANT cross platform? Can we run on all platforms?

316.                   What is minimally required to run ANT build file?

317.                   How to setup ANT?

318.                   What is meant by ant target?

319.                   How do you define a target in the build xml?

320.                   What is ant task?

321.                   How do you write and define a task in the build xml?

322.                   How do you load the parameters from a file? Also from Java system properties?

323.                   How do you reference properties? What are different in-built properties?

324.                   How to group multiple targets to run from single target?

325.                   What is the depends attribute? What is description attribute?

326.                   Do you need have all the time build.xml? Or any file is ok? What is the difference having the build.xml or another file name?

327.                   What are the minimal things required in build.xml?

328.                   How do you run a target from cmd or terminal? Can you run a task directly from ant command at the terminal?

329.                   How to set a default target to be executed without specifying with ant command?

330.                   Can you run any program from ANT? If yes, how?

331.                   What do you need to run build.xml? Any downloads?

332.                   How do you set the classpath?

333.                   What is classpathref in the ANT build and what is its significance?

334.                   What do you need to integrate any software?

335.                   How do you integrate Java compilation and execution (snippet) process in the ant build file?

336.                   How do you create a jar in ant framework (snippet)?

337.                   How do you integrate JUnit runtime in ant framework (snippet)?

338.                   How do you integrate TestNG runtime in ant framework (snippet)?

339.                   Can you include one build.xml in another build.xml?

340.                   How can you call another target from same build file?

341.                   How can you call a target from one build.xml in another build.xml?

342.                   How do you print messages on the console? How do know supported ant tasks?

343.                   How do you know supported ant targets from a ant build.xml?

344.                   What is fileset? Where do you use?

345.                   What is the end-to-end flow (in build.xml) to build and run a Java application?

SKILL#11. MAVEN

346.                   What is Maven? Why and how do you use? What are other alternatives?

347.                   What are key objectives and features of Maven?

348.                   How does Maven use Convention over Configuration?

349.                   How to install and setup Maven - steps?

350.                   What is the latest Maven version?

351.                   How do you create a new project workspace using archetype or project template?

352.                   Describe the default workspace structure created by Maven?

353.                   What is POM? What is its core value?

354.                   Describe briefly the skeleton of POM file.

355.                   What is groupId? What is artifactId? What is version?

356.                   What is the jar name look like based on the above?

357.                   What is Maven repository? Describe both local and central repositories?

358.                   What is the default local repository path?

359.                   Where do you set the dependency information?

360.                   How to set the dependency to download testng 6.9.6 version? Also selenium java 2.46.0 jar?

361.                   What are the commands to compile sources, build jar, and run tests?

362.                   What is the main sources directory path? What is the test sources directory path?

363.                   Where are the classes get generated for both product and tests?

364.                   Do you need to download the dependent jars all the time from the internet (central repository)? How to force the update?

365.                   What is the command ‘mvn install’ does?

366.                   How to publish the artifacts to central repository?

367.                   Where do you check if any third party dependent jar is needed?

368.                   How to generate the product documentation? Where does it generate the files (index.html etc.)?

369.                   What is a maven plugin? What is main functionality?

370.                   What is a maven goal? Where is it used?

371.                   What is a build phase? How do phases relate to plugins?

372.                   What are default phases in the maven build lifecycle?

373.                   How do you clean up the build?

374.                   What is meant by maven local settings and global settings? And where do they located?

375.                   What do you need while publishing an artifact to a repository?

376.                   How to generate eclipse project files?

377.                   How do you generate ANT build files automatically from existing Maven project?

378.                   What project files do you check into source code repository?

379.                   Do you generate pom.xml and other files again if you accidentally deleted the files?

380.                   What happens if you accidentally deleted target folder?

381.                   How do you compare Maven with ANT?

SKILL#12. JUNIT

382.                   What is JUnit?

383.                   What kind of testing framework is it? Who uses it -  Developers or QA/QE?

384.                   Where do you use JUnit?

385.                   What are all major versions in JUnit? Which version have you used? Differences between JUnit 4 or 4.x vs. JUnit 3 or 3.x?

386.                   What do you need to start working with JUnit?

387.                   How to write, compile and execute a simple JUnit test program?

388.                   What are different ways that you can run a JUnit test program?

389.                   How do you run JUnit tests from the command line? What do you put in the classpath?

390.                   Does JUnit support annotations? Which version?

391.                   Describe the key annotations supported in JUnit4?

392.                   What are the differences between JUnit3.x and JUnit4.x?

393.                   Why do you import JUnit assert methods as static? What is its advantage?

394.                   What is “no runnable methods” exception message? When do you get this?

395.                   How do you generate a single HTML report from multiple JUnit results xml files?

396.                   What happens when a test method or code inside it throws an exception?

397.                   Can a test method contain multiple assertions? What happens if any assertion failed?

398.                   What is your strategy to have assertions as one assertion per method or multiple assertions in a test method? Are there any advantages and disadvantages? What is the recommendation?

399.                   How do you create test suites?

400.                   Can you group the JUnit tests like in TestNG?

401.                   How do you enable and disable test methods?

402.                   How do you distinguish a regular Java method vs. a JUnit test method? What are the rules to be followed for a test method?

403.                   Is JUnit a Data Driven framework? How do you write data driven test?

404.                   Do we need to follow naming rules for test methods in JUnit 4?

405.                   Do you write a test class per a dev class? What is your strategy?

406.                   What happens if a test method is declared as “private” and also it returns a value rather than void?

407.                   Do you need the main() method in the JUnit test class? Why or why not?

408.                   What is a JUnit Test Fixture? When do you use?

409.                   What is the Java package for JUnit? What is the main test runner program class?

410.                   How do you run JUnit tests as a batch without creating explicit suite class creation?

411.                   What are other frameworks in similar to JUnit?

412.                   How do you develop the JUnit Tests? Can you explain end to end process for automating these tests?

SKILL#13. TESTNG

413.                   What is TestNG framework? what are the key goals with TestNG?

414.                   What are key features of TestNG?

415.                   What are all required software and libraries to work with TestNG?

416.                   What are all different annotations supported by TestNG?

417.                   What version of TestNG have you used? What kind of plugins have you used?

418.                   What are the typical TestNG test development steps?

419.                   How does the report formats look like? Does this generate XML report?

420.                   How do you execute TestNG tests?

421.                   How do you integrate with ANT?

422.                   What are the steps in writing a data-driven test class with TestNG?

423.                   How do you group the tests?

424.                   How do you set the dependency of test method on groups or other test methods?

425.                   How do you enable and disable the tests?

426.                   What is testng xml? How do you set the test suites and test classes?

427.                   Can you run multiple testng xml files at a time? How?

428.                   What is the default report directory? What is default report format?

429.                   What is the TestNG API java package?

430.                   What are different assertions supported by TestNG Assert?

431.                   How do you import methods than classes in TestNG class (as an example for assertEquals())?

432.                   What are the similarities between TestNG and JUnit 4?

433.                   What are the differences between JUnit4 and TestNG? Which one do you use? Why?

SKILL#14. HUDSON/JENKINS

434.                   What is meant by continuous integration (CI)? What are the key benefits of CI?

435.                   What are different CI tools/software?

436.                   Describe Hudson and Jenkins software?

437.                   What is the difference between Hudson and Jenkins? How to choose which one?

438.                   How do you setup Jenkins?

439.                   How do you change the default http 8080 port while starting the Jenkins?

440.                   What is a jenkins job? How do you create jobs in Jenkins? Who creates the Jenkins job?

441.                   How long does it take to create a simple job for running your tests?

442.                   How do you schedule and/or run the builds?

443.                   How do you schedule the build periodically? What field values set to schedule at 11pm on every day?

444.                   How to clean up old builds and workspace?

445.                   How do you configure the SCM (SVN) in a job?

446.                   How to install a Jenkins plugin?

447.                   What do you need to do if Git source code is needed in Jenkins?

448.                   What is the Jenkins dashboard? And what actions you can perform?

449.                   How do you configure ANT build file and target to be executed?

450.                   How do you archive the results? And send the build artifacts or results in an email?

451.                   What happens when multiple jobs or same job scheduled multiple times?

452.                   How to see the console output while a job is running?

453.                   How do you configure JDK, ANT, Maven in Jenkins?

454.                   How does one can extend the Jenkins functionality?

455.                   How many plugins are there in Jenkins? Can you list some?

456.                   How do you get the help while creating job?

457.                   How do you do distributed builds? What are Jenkins master and slave nodes?

SKILL#15. WEB APPLICATIONS TESTING AND SELENIUM

458.                   What is the Web Application/UI testing means to you?

459.                   What are the key challenges in Web UI testing?

460.                   What automation framework(s) have you used?

461.                   What is Selenium and why do we use? Any alternatives?

462.                   What are the differences between Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, Selenium1.0, Selenium2.0, WebDriver?

463.                   What Selenium versions and drivers you had used?

464.                   How to do you develop automated tests for a given web site? Explain end-to-end process flow.

465.                   Can you briefly explain on how to write a simple Selenium test?

466.                   What are the different web elements that you can find from Selenium and the list of actions performed?

467.                   How does the page loading happen in WebDriver? How long does the test code to wait?

468.                   What are different WebElement locators? How do you find those elements? What tools or strategies do you use?

469.                   How to maximize the browser window?

470.                   How to switch between windows and frames?

471.                   What are the challenges that you had faced with Selenium automation?

472.                   How do you test Ajax requests?

473.                   What is implicit wait and explicit wait?

474.                   What happens if we have both explicit wait and implicit wait together in the same test?

475.                   What is the default wait time while finding an element?

476.                   What are different expected conditions to be used in the explicit wait?

477.                   Does Selenium WebDriver supports any test report/driver framework?

478.                   What automation test report/driver framework that you had used with Selenium?

479.                   How do you automate Ajax auto-suggestion or auto-complete UI?

480.                   How do you trace or log the web requests access? Can we have event listeners? How?

481.                   What is WebDriver Actions class? How to use it?

482.                   What are the common issues with cross browser testing?

483.                   What is meant by headless driver and an example?

484.                   How do you set the browser specific settings?

485.                   What is a proxy server and how to configure it in the automated tests?

486.                   What are the selenium design patterns? What design strategies that you had used?

487.                   What is PageObject? How to write design PageObject based tests?

488.                   What are the different browser versions and platforms you have used in your environment?

489.                   How did you integrate Selenium tests with continuous integration system?

490.                   What is Selenium Grid2 and why do we need?

491.                   How do you configure the Selenium Grid and run tests in parallel?

492.                   How do you test Flash objects with Selenium WebDriver?

493.                   Explain and differentiate Data Driven, Keyword Driven, Hybrid test design frameworks.

494.                   Can you explain the high-level design process for the test automation?

495.                   How to read the properties file from Java code?

496.                   How do you take the screenshots/images for the failed tests? Give the code snippet.

497.                   How do you handle drag-and-drop web UI scenario in the automation?

498.                   How do you do handle html SELECT element automation?

499.                   What is HTTP protocol? Please explain.

500.                   What are different HTTP status codes?

501.                   Can we get HTTP status codes from Selenium WebDriver?

502.                   Can you explain the end-to-end process for a given website testing with selenium?

SKILL#16. WEB SERVICES (SOAP&REST API) TESTING AND SOAPUI TOOL

503.                   How do you describe Web Services? What are key elements?

504.                   What are some of the distributed technologies?

505.                   What are the benefits or key advantages of web services?

506.                   What are key elements in web service architecture? How is it different from traditional client/server?

507.                   What are different kinds of web services?

508.                   What kind of protocol used between the service provider and consumer?

509.                   What is a de-facto standard web service?

510.                   What is a SOAP based web service?

511.                   What is the transport protocol used for SOAP web services? And what is the Payload?

512.                   What are different versions available in SOAP? What is the latest?

513.                   What are some of the WS implementations around?

514.                   What is meant by API? How do you describe APIs or characteristics of APIs?

515.                   Why are Web Services called as APIs?

516.                   How would you test an API (say for address validation)? How many tests do you write? Can you write single test case covering all different scenarios?

517.                   What are the things to be tested in Web Services API testing?

518.                   What is a RESTful Web Service? How do you describe these services?

519.                   What are the key elements in REST APIs?

520.                   What are the different message formats supported in SOAP and REST WS?

521.                   How is a SOAP envelope and what it contains?

522.                   How do the REST API request and REST API responses look (give a snippet)?

523.                   What is WSDL? And it's significance?

524.                   What is UDDI, and its significance?

525.                   What is WADL, and its significance?

526.                   What is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

527.                   How do you compare SOAP web services with RESTful web services?  Which one is more secure/standard/reliable?  Which one is more simple to use?

528.                   What are some of the example SOAP web services and RESTful APIs?

529.                   What are some of SOAP based WS-* specifications?

530.                   What is a protocol or protocol stack? What is meant by over HTTP protocol?

531.                   What is HTTP protocol? What are different HTTP methods?

532.                   How do you map HTTP methods with CRUD operations in REST?

533.                   What are some of the web services testing tools or frameworks available for the automated testing?

534.                   What is SoapUI tool? Why do you choose SoapUI tool? What are latest versions?

535.                   What are different platforms supported?

536.                   What kind of testing can be done with SoapUI tool? What are some of the key features of SoapUI tool?

537.                   Does the SoapUI tool support the data-driven framework?

538.                   How do you do the data driven in SoapUI tool?

539.                   Describe the end-to-end steps for testing of web services using SoapUI tool?

540.                   What are the data stores that can be associated with data sources?

541.                   What is basic input required to test SOAP and RESTful web services?

542.                   How do the tests developed in SoapUI projects getting saved? What are the different types of SoapUI tests execution?

543.                   Can you generate JUnit test reports from SoapUI tests? And how?

544.                   How do you integrate SoapUI tests in ANT and Jenkins?

545.                   Without SoapUI tool, how can you test web services?

546.                   How do you use the properties in SoapUI projects?

547.                   Can you create a mock service from SoapUI tool? And how?

548.                   How do you assert the responses with xpath in SoapUI project?

549.                   What is the hierarchy of test workspace structure with SoapUI?

550.                   What kind of automation framework used for both web application and web services testing?

HANDS-ON/GETTING STARTED

JAVA SAMPLES CODE

SELENIUM SAMPLES CODE

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

READER’S TRACKING INDEX

Introduction

The book is about Software Quality & Java automation skills with basic concepts, self-review and interviews preparation related to the Java based projects in a practical sense with questions-answers. This book is targeted mainly at beginners to the software quality and development engineers. It is also useful for experienced quality engineers to do self-assessment and to be on top of relevant automation skills.

In the software industry, the quality related professional role is called as QA (Quality Assurance) or QE (Quality Engineering) engineer. In general, the "Quality Assurance" and "Quality Engineering" roles carry out the similar effort. The QA is a traditional role originated from industrial manufacturing assembly where the final product quality tested by verifying against a checklist, inspected for any damages and finally put a quality sticker. The similar QA role came to IT Software but associated with Engineering background. So, QE role makes sense for Software industry, and it stresses more on the importance of applying the Engineering principles rather than simply repeating the quality assurance actions.

The QA role involves the tasks such as understanding of the software product features & domain knowledge, writing test plans, writing test specifications, manual execution of tests and interpreting results. Later, one has to do the development of automated tests, automated execution and generation of final results summary for release level regression testing. Note that the QA role need average coding skills, but it takes more time and energy than in general as expected by many people. Because, for each product release in the product line, the developed tests should be continuously executed and verified to make sure no regressions at any point in time.  The Quality Engineering skills have to be applied all the time during the product development. The quality has to be measured, assessed and concluded to prove that product is meeting the customer expectations. Without the engineering principles, quality testing might be happening and can discover some bugs but it may not ensure the proper proof to justify the on the quality and might leave some gaps. In summary, apply the core engineering principles such as measuring, making consistency, repeatability and correctness during the application of testing techniques.

It is difficult to do the above principles merely with the manual approach because of limitations such as human errors in producing consistent actions & output, testing coverage with quick, agile product development cycles and making sure each build is verified for regressions. The Quality Automation is one of the important things to address this continuous regression testing. The automation effort needs programming skills in the same software domain and relevant skills to achieve the high automation, which saves time and test coverage.

It is hard to survive without having the fundamentals and automation skills in software development and quality as a QA or dev engineer. Also, many skills need references to many other books that were not targeted at QA professions. Now, this book is an attempt to create such survival guide for QA professional with all relevant skills at one place.

This book should help in making sure that you get the basic core concepts, working knowledge and in summary as a survival guide for programming and automation with all required skills. The goal is not to aim at making you an expert at one skill or entirely on these skills. The focus is on finding the needed skills and at what level is being used for 80% of the time (80-20 rule) in the Java programming and Quality engineering profession.

For the Manual QA engineer, this book helps in understanding Quality concepts, SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), technical terminology, etc. Also, this helps in moving the engineer from manual testing to automation.

This book also helps junior developers working on Java projects in SDLC, OOPS, Java programming, unit testing and most of the other skills are in common with automation. Also, it gives understanding some of the test frameworks and terminologies in the test development.

One of the key thing to observe is that it is not difficult to learn anything but to see what is relevant and why to learn. Learn the things most important to you in the work or life. If someone asserts on what you know, then it builds more confidence in the current profession or newly pursuing one.

At a high level, this book starts with the areas such as processes (SDLC/Quality/OOPS), data (XML/XPath/JSON), code repositories (SVN/GIT), and operating systems (Unix/Linux). Then enters into programming (Java&JDBC), and later build frameworks/tools (ANT/Maven). After that it covers more on unit testing frameworks/tools (Junit/TestNG) and continuous integration tools (Jenkins/Hudson).  Next, it includes the functional testing of web applications and web services with frameworks/tools (TestNG/Selenium/SoapUI) covered. Finally, included samples code (for Java/Selenium) to reference offline, and hands-on/getting started in the job.

There are about 500+ questions and answers to ease on understanding the concepts and for review purpose.

The below are 16 core skills covered in this book.

1.    Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC): The SDLC is to understand the core methodology of the software development process. This process is one of the essential concept for Dev/QA individual and the teams to collaborate effectively in the creation of the software products or IT services.

2.    Software Quality Concepts: The quality concepts are the fundamental knowledge on the testing part of SDLC process that must be possessed by every QA and Dev team for the delivery of a high-quality software product.

3.    OOPS: The majority of the software products development has been done with Object-oriented languages such as  Java, C++, and other OO high-level languages. OOP concept is very much essential for any Java/C++ programmer to maintain or develop new software in Java.

4.    XML: Most of the existing dynamic content, e-commerce sites and many software configurations have been done using XML file format. It is essential to understand this universal XML file format to survive in the Software dev and QA profession.

5.    XPath: As long XML is there, the XPath also plays a key role in performing the navigation, extraction of XML, and transformation of the content to various other forms (HTML/text). So better to acquire this skill by developers and QA professionals.

6.    JSON: The JSON file format is a newly evolving and modern universal file format. JSON format is being used widely in REST WS,  Internet/Web applications, Social sites, etc. Having hands-on with JSON files is crucial for all developers and QA automation professionals.

7.    SCM/SCCS(SVN/GIT): The source code is one of the major intellectual property of any software organization. It is essential to collaborate with the developing teams using a source code control system such as SVN or GIT. It is important to understand the SCM concepts and working knowledge on SVN and recently popular GIT software for both developers and QA automation engineers.

8.    Unix/Linux: In Today's World, most of the enterprise software, website hosting, and any Internet-hosted software or applications are on the Linux/Unix platform.  Having hands-on experience with this platform is fundamental for everyone.

9.    Java & JDBC: Most of the existing or new, whether small or larger software projects are still written in Java language. The Java should be at the heart of every software professional and thereby essential to have this language to survive in the software  development and QA automation profession.

10. ANT: The ANT is a build framework. Once it was popular and still is being used as Java build framework for both product code and test code in most of bigger software organizations. Having an understanding and hands-on experience for both developers and QA is good.

11. Maven: The Maven is a build framework used everywhere in the recent Java projects. It addresses some of the dependency resolution problems with Java project build process that was a burden with ANT. Maven makes the build process simple by using conventions. Thereby Maven is a significant survival skill for both developers and QA automation engineers.

12. JUnit: The unit testing should be one of core tasks for any Software developer. The JUnit is an old but simple and popular framework for Java projects. This test framework is still being used in many organizations and lot of IDEs support the automatic test code generation and execution. Having JUnit experience is an essential skill for developers.

13. TestNG: The TestNG is one of the common framework used across the unit testing and functional testing. TestNG is being used in most of the recent projects and specifically in Selenium based test projects. Having hands-on with this skill is essential for both developers and QA automation professionals.

14. Jenkins/Hudson (CI): In the Continuous Integration (CI) category, Jenkins/Hudson play a vital role with automated jobs for creating the product builds/bundles and also end-to-end regression test cycles. The Hudon/Jenkins functionality is extendable with plugins, and many of the plugins are already available. It is a widely used tool. Thereby having this skill by both developers and QA engineers gives a real strength.

15. Web Applications Testing – Selenium: The Selenium is a browser-based website testing automation framework. Many of the organizations need this skill to create automated test suites going through the browser. This framework acts as a remote to the browser. The selenium automation hands-on experience is a must for QA automation engineers.

16. Web Services (SOAP&REST API) Testing and SoapUI: The Web Services are loosely coupled and distributed technology that is widely used. The WS are being used in Service Oriented Architecture (using SOAP-based web services), or with the Internet resources addressed as RESTful WS or REST API or REST endpoints. Nowadays, the REST is very popular and is everywhere. It is essential to understand and test these REST APIs. This skill is a must for both developers and QA engineers to survive in the development of current software and IT services.

Hands-on/Getting started: Once joined the job, many times it will be a confusion where and how to get started the day-to-day work. This section helps to understand those basic expectations from your new company/team and walks through the flow.

Java samples code: Learning by an example is a quick way to learn new things. The Java sample code helps developers and QA engineers to get comfortable in Java programming.

Selenium samples code: The Selenium sample code helps QA engineers in learning the browser-based website test automation using Selenium. Having examples is a good way to quickly getting into coding.

17.  

How to read this book?

For beginners and junior software engineers, it is recommended to go from Skill#1 to Skill#16 so that each learned concept or skill would be used in the following skills.

For senior engineers and leaders, just jump to any skill to review the concepts. There is no direct link between the skill chapters rather the previous skills will be used in the later skills.

Overall, these skills review should get you at the level about five years of experience in the Software quality and Java automation profession.

Finally, this book is an attempt to share and build confidence in you with core skills of Software quality and Java automation.

All the best for your journey!

Skill#1. Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

The SDLC is to understand the core methodology of the software development process. This process is one of the essential concept for Dev/QA individual and the teams to collaborate effectively in the creation of the software products or IT services.

1.    What is Software?

o The Software or Computer Software is a set of programs and data that process information and controls underlying hardware. It includes programs, libraries, and non-executable data.

o Some of the examples include the following.

o  Operating Systems such as Windows, MacOS, Linux, Solaris, etc.

o  Browser software such as Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.

o  Office software such as Microsoft Office, Star Office, etc.

o  IDE software such as Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ, etc.

o  Any other programs that operate on devices and data.

o The main purpose of software is to have the flexibility to control a general purpose solution, business solution or devices such as mobile, desktop or large computers.

o The software is everywhere in the Today’s evolving technologies. Understanding and gaining of software skills would help in professional advanced technology careers.

2.    What is SDLC? Why do you need such models? What are different models?

o SDLC stands for Software Development Life Cycle. It is the process of developing any software. There are many processes around from a traditional “Waterfall model” to the latest “Agile” processes. There are many types in Agile itself such as XP (eXtreme Programming), Scrum, TDD (Test Driven Development), etc.

3.    How is SDLC related to Testing?

o Testing is the part of the SDLC and understanding it will help effective testing of a software product. The testing is the process that comes as verification phase in Waterfall model and in testing part of agile Scrum.

4.    What is Waterfall model? What are different phases involved?

o The Waterfall model (as the name indicates) is like water flowing from upper ground to next lower ground where development (along with information) passes through different phases as one after the other. It involves five different phases in an order and goes to next phase only after completing the prior phase.

o The phases are

i) Inception

ii) Design

iii) Implementation

iv) Verification

v) Maintenance.

o It is hard to inject the customer requirements (either with new requirements or changes to old requirements) while development is in progress. It usually takes about six months to 1-5 years to complete such projects and most of the time used in old stable/matured projects and also in larger projects.

5.    What is Agile Scrum process? Can you describe at a high level?

o Agile Scrum is an iterative process of developing software with the goal of getting incremental intermediate product delivery. In the agile scrum process, there will be a product backlog, Sprint backlog and short cycles of the development process(typically seven days length of a sprint with the goal of delivering product in 4-5 weeks) and release. Sprints are repeated until entire product backlog is completed. Every release is towards an improvement or finish towards the end product. Customer requirements can be injected into product backlog and will be picked up by next sprint (through sprint backlog).  There will be daily stand-up meetings of approx. 15 mins in length on the scrum sync’ up.

6.    When does the testing activity gets started in each development model?

o In the waterfall model, testing is started only in the verification phase after completing the implementation phase.

o In the agile model, testing is done in every sprint or scrum cycle.  Testing is started since beginning with the features in that sprint and work closely with the dev on the completed features within that sprint.

7.    What is meant by standup meetings in the scrum process? What are the three questions (typically) you need to answer in Agile Scrum process?

o The following three questions are to be answered and should be getting ready for the meeting.

i.    What have you done since Yesterday?

ii.  What are you going to do Today?

iii. What are the blocking issues or stumbling blocks (from you)?

8.    Who is Scrum Master? What is his/her role and responsibilities?

o The scrum master is like project manager in the agile scrum software development process. Scrum master handles the sprint schedule, product backlog, sprint backlog and conducts the daily standup meetings with all stakeholders.

9.    Are you aware of any Agile tools?

o Rally software is one of the tools (http://www.rallydev.com) to used for tracking the Agile process.

o Atlassian’s JIRA also being used to track the tasks in a sprint and have the epics with JIRA dashboards.

o Finally, simple wikis/spreadsheets can also be used as a tracking tool.

10. What is a sprint? What is a typical duration for a sprint?

o The sprint is the short cycles of software development lifecycle, and typically it is a weekly or 2 or 3 or 4 weeks period to code, verify, document a set of user stories or fix and verify the bugs.

11. What is meant by product backlog?

o The product backlog is the list of tasks and requirements for a product under development. The backlog gives the full list of prioritized requirements or tasks for the product at any given time. If any new or changes in the old requirements, those will be updated in this product backlog and prioritized.

12. What is a sprint backlog?

o The sprint backlog is the list of prioritized tasks and requirements to be completed in a particular sprint cycle. It is a subset of top requirements or tasks picked from the product backlog.

13. Where do you add the changed requirements? Whether in a sprint backlog or product backlog?

o The changes in the requirements would be added to the product backlog and will not be added to the current sprint backlog. These changes would be picked up in Next sprint cycle (through sprint backlog) from the product backlog.

14. Can you change a sprint backlog during a sprint?

o No. Not in the current sprint but the next sprint cycle would catch up the sprint backlog derived from product backlog with those changes.

15. What is a use case?

o Use case is the sequence/flow of actions and events performed by an actor to achieve a business goal. The actor could be an end-user using the system or the system or device itself interacting with some other system. There will be many use cases for a given product under development.

16. What is a user story?

o The user story, the term used in the agile SDLC process and is a simple description of a software requirement in the end user’s perspective and his/her business job function. It should be scoped for an iteration and should provide a business value or add the value to the overall product once implemented.

17. What is Test Driven Development(TDD) process?

o The Test-driven development is an agile software development process under extreme programming paradigm. In the TDD, the developer first writes an initial, which is a failed automated unit test as per user story and repeatedly modified the code until the test passed. I don’t think TDD is that popular or widely used now.

18. What are the advantages and disadvantages of waterfall model?

o Waterfall model advantages:

o  It can give better project schedule estimation and planning.

o  It provides the re-use of Resources because of sequential phases.

o  Good for large projects with clear planning, design, architecture before actual implementation. The team is not under time pressure (in comparison with Agile) as there can be sufficient time buffer for planned tasks. Typical project release duration is higher and is between 6 months to 1-5 years compared to Agile monthly project releases.

o Waterfall model disadvantages:

o  Customer requirements can't be accommodated in the middle of the project.

o  This takes more time and incurs more cost.

o  There is no incremental product delivery. The final project is available only after the final phase, which is a longer in duration.

o  It is difficult to predict if the project is doomed to failure until the project completion or out of resources.

19. What are advantages and disadvantages of Agile Scrum process?

o Scrum process advantages:

o  Adapt to the changes where customer requirements can be honored in the middle of the project development (that is in the next sprint cycle).

o  It helps in doing incremental product delivery.

o  It takes less time comparing with waterfall model.

o  It gives an early indication of the project status and can be stopped quickly or can be transformed to a different project.

o Scrum process disadvantages:

o  It can consume more resources because sprint cycles need to cover all dev/test/doc activities at same time.

o  Typically, it is good for shorter projects with less complex projects (where fewer alternatives/architectures to be considered).

o  It demands high productivity and constant effort be done by the team and thereby stress or time pressure felt by the team.

o  Also it will have more quick sync’ up meetings.

20. What is the typical team size in different SDLC models?

o A typical number could be viewed as below, and it can very much be based on the matured SDLC process in the organization.

o  Waterfall model >10 team size

o  Agile model < 10 team size

o Nowadays, more team size projects (like more than 50) also doing well with Agile Scrum process. It is becoming a de-facto process for most of the startups and new development teams in larger organizations.

o Also, it could be some kind of mixed as waterfall and agile together in the development process.

21. Which SDLC model suits for rapidly changing requirements?

o Agile SDLC process  (say scrum) is most suitable because the changes can be uptaken in the next sprint cycle. Thereby customer requirements can be considered during the product development time itself rather than waiting till the product release.

22. Which model suits for incremental product delivery?

o Agile SDLC process (say scrum) because it is an iterative process contributing to the overall product in each sprint cycle. Thereby product progress can be seen as sprints in progress and can be demo-ed or given to the sales and trial customers before the final release of the product.

23. What is meant by refactoring? Where do you typically do?

o Refactoring is the general software engineering process in coding and is to make code changes in such a way that it can improve readability, structure and optimization while keeping the use case/behavior intact.

o This refactoring process is very typical in the software programming and also especially in the agile process as it is iterative because getting the perfect code is not possible with all optimizations at a time.

24. What is meant by alpha and beta products? Who are the consumers? What is the main objective?

o The Alpha product is the very initial product available after code completion but exists with many bugs (all features might not work as expected).

o The Beta product is the next milestone product after Alpha release with more bugs fixed but some bugs can still exist in the end-user functionality and also still the quality improvement should be done.

o Few Alpha customers would be selected for Alpha testing, which is done at the customer site to get the very initial feedback on the features understanding.

o Few Beta customers would be selected for Beta testing, which is done at the customer site to get the feedback so that those can be fixed before the release of the RTM (Release to Manufacture) product.

o The main objective of these intermediate releases is to make sure that the customer acceptance is in-line with the product development and make corrections with their feedback.

25. What is a PRD (Product Requirements Document) or BRD (Business Requirements Document)? What it contains and who owns this?

o PRD is the product requirements document with the list of customer features gathered and the documented by the product management (PM) team.  The PMs interact with customers on the product requirements and acceptance criteria later.

o BRD is the Business requirements document, which is similar to PRD but used in the context of IT projects or consumer projects (like retail or financial) than Product research projects.

26. What is a functional specification? What it contains and who owns this?

o The Functional specification document is a detailed requirements analysis document created by the senior development team for each feature listed in the PRD/BRD.

o This document contains a detailed specification of features and owned by the Dev team.

27. What is meant by soft code freeze (SCF)? When does it happen in the SDLC process?

o Soft code freeze or Feature complete is a considerable milestone that occurs after completing the implementation of all the features during the development process.

o After SCF, no more features would be added, and instead, only critical, high and medium bugs would be fixed.

o A separate branch or tagging of source code repository would be created for this SCF milestone and keep using this branch until release is completed.

o QA team would continue to test and file bugs as Dev team continue to fix the bugs (but no new feature).

28. What is meant by hard code freeze (HCF)? When does it happen in the development process?

o Hard code freeze is a milestone and happens after SCF milestone when most of the critical/high/medium bugs fixed and ready for final QA test cycle to find any showstopper bugs (that can stop the release).

o After HCF, only show stopper (customer impact is very high) bugs would be fixed.

o Please note that these show stopper bug fixes are allowed only with product management approvals.

29. What is product release candidate (RC)? What is a release?

o Release Candidate (RC) is the final milestone in the product release cycle timeline.

o RC is created after HCF is completed and QA would do the final test cycle before RTM release.

o RC would be released as RTM product when no show stopper bugs found on this final build.

o The product release is nothing but bits are ready to handover for manufacturing (i.e., to cut the CD/DVD) or download from the internet by the customers.

o For the release bits testing, QA and dev teams would do the final sanity testing like checking binary sizes, documentation links, basic installation, downloads check, etc., so that customers don’t see any basic issues.

30. What is release notes? Who drives this?

o Release notes is a document that is made available to the customer along with product release where customer is aware of such as basic version, features summary, critical known issues with workarounds, documentation references etc.

o Release notes document is integrated into the product bundle and also downloadable from the internet. Any updates in future would be updated in the online documentation.

o Release Engineering (RE) team drives the release notes but contributed and reviewed by all the project stakeholders.

31. What is a release criteria? Who sets this up and who has to follow?

o The Release criteria are the minimum checklist or goals to be achieved to release the product. This effort is driven by RE team, and all the project stakeholders would contribute to making this release to happen.

o Below is a sample release criteria/checklist and can be taken as a template if none is available.

o  Bugs criteria

●    No P1, P2, P3 open bugs

o  Quality criteria

●    100% feature coverage and test development

●    100% test execution

●    95-100% pass rate

●    >90% automation for regressions

o  Stress/Load/Concurrency criteria

●    100 users/sec          

o  Performance criteria

●    Minimum throughput numbers related to the product.

●    Comparison to other competitive products

o  Code coverage

●    >90% class level

●    >50% method level

●    >40% instruction/statement level

o  Internationalization (I18N) & Localization (L10N)

●    Internationalization support

●    Specific languages to translate

●    NOTE: I18N is short form as there are 18 characters between I and N in the “InternationalizatioN”. Similarly, L10N is short form as there are 10 characters between L and N in the “LocalizatioN”.

o  Documentation (books/online)

●    Release notes

●    User Manuals

○  Installation Guide, Admin Guide, Developer Guide, Troubleshooting guide, etc.

o  License and license text

o  Support/Maintenance plan   

32. What is meant by a release showstopper? When does it happen?

o The showstopper is a bug that has a visible & high impact to the customer and must be fixed before the product release. If the fixes are not possible within the release time, then corresponding bugs and workarounds should be added to release notes.

o This kind of bug fixes should go through focused reviews and approvals to minimize the regressions (if any) in this final release of the product.

o The showstopper happens after the HCF and RC milestones or during the final sprint of the development process.

o The regressions tests should be selected based on the bug fixes instead of running all the tests because of the need for quick turnaround time. 

33. Who are all project stakeholders? What are those teams?

o In general, below are the Project stakeholders in a product development organization.

o  Product Manager

●    Acts as a bridge between product and customers

●    Responsible to create PRD (Product Requirement Document) or BRD (Business Requirement Document).

o  Project Manager/Dev Manager/Dev Director

●    Owner of the product execution (who creates and executes the Project Plan)

●    Acts as a driver for successful project release.

o  Program Manager

●    Co-ordinates with all stakeholders during the project execution and helps project driver.

●    Conducts release meetings

o  Architects

●    Responsible for performing product architecture considering the big and strategic goals like scaling, availability, performance, security, technology, etc.

●    Creates architectural diagrams and documents.

●    Work closely with the design/development teams for making the implementation successful.

o  Designers

●    Responsible for the product design and work closely with Architects and developers.

●    Creates FSD/FS (Functional Specification Document)

●    Please note that sometimes Architects can act as designers or senior developers can be designers.

o  Developers

●    Responsible for implementation (coding) as per FS.

●    Do bug fixes

●    Conducts unit testing

o  QA/QE

●    Responsible for Testing ( tasks like write test code, execute tests, file bugs, create Test Plan and Test Specification).

●    Review documents - release notes, manuals/guides

o  Doc writers

●    Responsible for all sorts of documentation like user guides/manuals/help content.

o  Release Engineers (RE)/Devops

●    Responsible for doing the integration of modules and creating the builds.

●    The DevOps would host and monitor the stage and production sites.

o  Support Engineers/Front-end support (customer facing)

●    This team would triage the customer issue and pass on to backend support if needed.

o  Support Engineers/Backend support

●    They would triage and fix the customer issues escalated by front-end support engineers.

34. What is a test cycle at product level?

o A test cycle is the duration of time, where all the test activities can be completed on a given product binary/build.

o A typical cycle could be varied from 1 week to 4+ weeks.

35. How does the QA team track the weekly status or progress?

o Typically, QA team representative (Director or Manager or Lead) would prepare the answers to the following questions while tracking the status summary.

o  How many open bugs and list of these bugs?

o  How many blocking bugs (P1)

o  How many tests are failing (count and %)? Example: 30% failing

o  How much test development is pending? Example: 40% tests

o  When will be the test automation is going to be completed?

o  What are the bugs inflow (new bugs came since last reported time) and outflow (fixed bugs since last reported time)? (Example: Weekly)

o  What are the total number of bugs fixed and bugs opened? Bugs trend.

o  How many bugs yet to be verified?

●    Please note that the bugs verification & closing usually done by the bug filer.

o Get all the answers in a wiki or document and update in the email for the weekly status report and send to stakeholders.

36. What is Go/No-Go for product release?

o “Go/No-Go” is the decision voting conveyed/sent after their respective release criteria met by each project stakeholder participated in the release meeting.

o Once all votes of GO received, then RE would take it as the GO for release. Any No-Go voting should be discussed and mitigated or fixed before release.

o Once it is a GO, then it is a celebration time for the entire project team;)

← End: Skill#1. Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)  ←

Good!

Keep going and never give up!!

Please re-read again for more clarity and feel free to contact for help!!!

→ Start: Skill#2. Software Quality Concepts →

End of the book preview.

Author’s biography

Jagadesh Babu Munta is working as a Consulting Member of Technical Staff with Oracle America Inc. He has been with Oracle and Sun Microsystems together for over 16 years (since June 2000). Jagadesh has overall 20+ years of Software development and quality/testing experience. Jagadesh's experience has been filled recently with Cloud PaaS services, Multi-Tenancy, Security and Penetration testing. In the past, extensively worked on Java EE servers like SailFin/GlassFish/Sun Java System/iPlanet/Netscape Application Servers testing. Jagadesh has gained extensive expertise in software automation, designing frameworks, writing tools, scripts, creating tests, writing specs/plans, etc. Jagadesh is interested in developing and testing complex software useful to up level the humanity.

Jagadesh Munta holds M.S. in Software Engineering from San Jose State University, California, USA; B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from J.N.T.U., Hyderabad, India; Special Diploma in Electronics with Specialization in Computer Engineering, G.I.O.E, Secunderabad, India.

Jagadesh Munta was born at Chejerla, Nellore, AP. India and lives with family in Fremont, California, USA.

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