Sample ISTQB questions for Agile tester extension certification

Correct Answer : a

Explanation:
A. Correct – From a customer perspective, working software is much more useful and valuable than overly detailed documentation, and it provides an opportunity to provide the development team rapid feedback.
B. Incorrect – It is normal practice, especially in test driven development, but it is not one of the values in the agile Manifesto.
C. Incorrect – The value is: customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
D. Incorrect – The value is: responding to change over following a plan.

Correct Answer : c

Correct Answer 2: d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This depends on the skillset of the team; developers may take on this task.
B. Incorrect – The team will work together to select tools that will enable them to be collaborative & efficient.
C. Correct – Testers support & collaborate with business representatives to help them create suitable acceptance tests.
D. Correct - In agile projects, quality is the responsibility of the whole team.
E. Incorrect – Developers may help with these tasks depending on the skillset of the team and individual workload.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – Software testing skills should be transferred and extended to non-testing
members of the team.
B. Incorrect – This depends on the skillset of the team and who is available; some testers may
have a development background.
C. Correct – Enables a variety of skillsets to be leveraged as needed for the project.
D. Incorrect – Specialized testers are still needed and are an important resource on agile projects.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect.
B. Incorrect.
C. Correct – See details below.
D. Incorrect.
1) Incorrect – Developers only implement features that are requested by business and are part of an iteration. If they complete their tasks, they will help out with other tasks assigned to the iteration.
2) Correct – Frequent customer feedback maintains a focus on the features with the highest business value
3) Incorrect – There may be more testing required due to frequent changes.
4) Correct – Customers indicate if requirements are missed or misinterpreted, and modify functionality if they desire

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – The same number of defects may be found using any software development process. The benefit with agile is the ability to find and fix defects faster.
B. Correct – Clarifying customer feature requests, early and regularly throughout development, making it more likely that key features will be available for customer use earlier and the product, will better reflect what the customer wants.
C. Incorrect – Agile does not single out individuals; it is about the whole team.
D. Incorrect – There may not be enough time to complete all features for a given iteration, but the agile process does allow the team to focus on those features that have the highest business value.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – See B for correct mapping.
B. Correct – Extreme Programming embraces 5 values to guide development: Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, Courage, and Respect. Scrum divides the project into short iterations called sprints. Kanban has no iterations or sprints; it is used to optimize continuous flow of
tasks and minimize throughput time of each task.
C. Incorrect – See B for correct mapping.
D. Incorrect – See B for correct mapping.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – It is important to consider testability and automation, but designing the application based on limiting the testing effort may not result in a suitable solution for the end-user.
B. Incorrect – The product owner prioritizes the various quality characteristics.
C. Incorrect – The performance acceptance criteria would normally be determined by the product owner.
D. Correct – The tester contributes by ensuring that the team creates acceptance criteria for the user story.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – Testers should participate in all aspects of the retrospective meeting.
B. Incorrect – Testers should participate in all aspects of the retrospective meeting.
C. Correct – All team members, both testers and non-testers, can provide input on both testing
and non-testing activities.
D. Incorrect – Testers can learn valuable information from the retrospective meeting to apply in
subsequent iterations

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This should be raised in order to help find defects earlier in the process.
B. Incorrect –This should be raised as a process improvement.
C. Correct – The retrospective meeting is not meant to single out individuals, but to focus on improvements of the process, and the team as a whole.
D. Incorrect – This should be raised as a process improvement.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This is a principle of continuous integration; builds are done at least once per day with automatic deploy and execution of automated unit & integration tests.
B. Incorrect – Continuous integration allows for constant availability of an executable software at any time and any place, for testing, demonstration, or education purposes.
C. Incorrect – The Continuous Integration practice enables developers to integrate work constantly, and test constantly, so errors in code can be detected rapidly.
D. Correct – Testing should be automated at the unit and integration level to allow for quick feedback on the quality of the build.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This is expected during iteration planning.
B. Incorrect – This is expected during iteration planning.
C. Incorrect – This is expected during iteration planning.
D. Correct – This is expected during release planning.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – The tester participates in the creation of the user story.
B. Incorrect – The user story should include both functional and non-functional requirements.
C. Incorrect – The user story is written collaboratively by the developers, testers, and business representatives.
D. Correct – In an Agile environment, user stories are written to capture requirements from the perspectives of developers, testers, and business representatives. The collaborative authorship of the user story can use techniques such as brainstorming and mind mapping.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – Agile testing promotes lightweight documentation.
B. Correct – Test automation at all levels occurs in many agile teams. As the developers focus on automating tests on unit level testers should focus on automating tests on integration, system, and acceptance level. In traditional projects it is not as common to have the same focus on automation. Sometimes automation is done once the system testing is completed in order to work with a stable system or just to automate regression tests for maintenance purposes after the system is deployed to production.
C. Incorrect – Exploratory testing is likely to take place in any software development practice.
D. Incorrect – Tester-developer collaboration is a good practice in all lifecycles.

Correct Answer : a

Explanation:
A. Correct – These three perspectives (tester, developer and business representative) are important to define when a feature is done.
B. Incorrect – Test level entry and exit criteria are more closely associated with traditional lifecycles.
C. Incorrect – Features should be verified in the same iteration in which they are developed.
D. Incorrect – Features should be verified in the same iteration in which they are developed.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This is a true statement. This can happen when testers and developers work closely together.
B. Correct –This is a false statement. Independent testers CAN find more defects than developers, but this is dependent on the level of testing being performed and also the expertise of the independent tester.
C. Incorrect – This is a true statement. This is an option which preserves a level of independence where there are separate test and development teams and testers are assigned on-demand at the end of a sprint.
D. Incorrect – This is a true statement. This option is satisfied when there are some specialized testers working on non-sprint or long term activities.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This may be an indicator of quality, but it assumes that sufficient testing has been conducted to identify all possible defects. Also, it does not identify if the system is considered to be “working software” at this point.
B. Correct – Positive customer feedback and working software are key indicators to product quality.
C. Incorrect – This is a good indication of team velocity, but does not provide information on the quality of the product.
D. Incorrect – This is also a good indication of team velocity, but again does not provide information on the quality of the product.

Correct Answer : a

Explanation:
A. Correct – Burndown charts show the planned progress and release date together with the actual progress of the user stories.
B. Incorrect – automation logs show tests that have passed and failed and is not linked to any form of estimates.
C. Incorrect – While the agile task board shows progress, this information is then used in the burndown chart. But the task board showing the progress of the user stories and tasks do not have anything to do with estimates.
D. Incorrect – The defect tracking tool can show progress of defect reports and can be used to establish the quality level of the product. But it does not relate to the team’s progress against estimates.

Correct Answer : a

Explanation:
A. Correct – As this feature has previously been delivered, a review of all test assets is required, which should result in the updating of test cases to meet new acceptance criteria, to ensure false negatives (i.e. invalid failing tests) do not occur. This is the initial task to be performed before a decision about any other changes can be made.
B. Incorrect – This would not be the initial task to perform, as the tester would not know what new tests would be required for these changes without reviewing the current tests first. There may not be a need to add new tests – updates to existing tests may suffice.
C. Incorrect – While this is good practice, it does not address the specific regression risk identified in this scenario.
D. Incorrect – Same as with choice B. Without reviewing the current tests for this feature, it is unknown if additional automation is required.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect.
B. Correct. See below for detailed justification.
C. Incorrect.
D. Incorrect.
i. This is true because agile expects and manages change and each iteration will require more and more regression testing. If automation was not used, then the team’s velocity would be reduced.
ii. This is false. This is not a reason to introduce automation on a project.
iii. This is false. We cannot retest/rerun all the test cases from a previous iteration. There are many test cases produced, with most being through manual exploratory testing, and it would not be feasible to automate everything.
iv. This is false. Automation will help avoid regression in the product due to the high number of changes. But it will not guarantee that defects have not been introduced.
v. This is true. Automation tools are linked to continuous integration tools that will execute and will highlight instantaneously if the new code breaks the build.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – see justification below.
B. Incorrect – see justification below.
C. Incorrect – see justification below.
D. Correct – see justification below.

i. Incorrect – Agile projects embrace and expect change, however this does not mean it happens daily.
ii. Correct– This is true, the earlier the agile team gets feedback on quality, the better.
iii. Correct– Test first and continuous integration require tests to be automated and to provide feedback on build, as part of automated build process.
iv. Incorrect – Testing should be done throughout each iteration, not only at the end.
v. Incorrect - Agile projects require different levels of testing, such as unit, system, and acceptance testing.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – see justification below.
B. Incorrect – see justification below.
C. Correct – see justification below.
D. Incorrect – see justification below
i. Incorrect – This task is a collaborative effort for the whole team.
ii. Correct– This activity is expected of the agile tester.
iii. Incorrect – In agile, defects are communicated regularly with stakeholders.
iv. True – This activity is typical for an agile tester.
v. Incorrect – Pair programming is typically done using two developers; testers are not expected to improve program logic although could review code for testability or maintainability.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This explanation probably refers to “burnout” rather than “burndown”.
B. Incorrect – This definition is describing the agile task board.
C. Correct – The burndown chart shows progress of the user stories that are complete (done), and an estimate of the remaining time to complete the rest of the user stories in the sprint.
D. Incorrect – Burndown charts do not have any reference to defects fixed or waiting to be fixed.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a technique used to develop code guided by automated test cases. It is also known as test first programming, since tests are written before the code. The tests are automated and are used in continuous integration.
B. Incorrect – The process for TDD is repeated for each small piece of code, running the previous tests as well as the added tests.
C. Incorrect – The tests serve as a form of executable design specification for future maintenance efforts.
D. Correct – This is true of BDD – not TDD.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – The workload for each sprint has nothing to do with the Test Pyramid concept.
B. Incorrect – The testing backlog and number of tests has nothing to do with the Test Pyramid concept.
C. Correct – The test pyramid emphasizes having more tests at the lower levels and a decreasing number of tests at the higher levels.
D. Incorrect – The number of automated tests has nothing to do with the Test Pyramid concept.

Correct Answer : a

Explanation:
A. Correct – The testing quadrants can be used as an aid to describe the types of tests to all stakeholders.
B. Incorrect – This is not a good metric since not all test levels/types are applicable for a given system.
C. Incorrect – The number of tests from each quadrant is dependent on the system under test and will rarely be equal for all quadrants. In some situations, there may not be any tests for a quadrant.
D. Incorrect – The testing quadrants have no correlation with risk level.

Correct Answer : c

Correct Answer 2: d

Explanation:
Q1 – Incorrect – These test cases are not technology-facing component tests.
Q2 – Incorrect – Usability and performance tests are not part of the 2nd quadrant.
Q3 – Correct – Usability testing is part of the 3rd quadrant.
Q4 – Correct – Performance testing is part of the 4th quadrant.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – Modifying the test automation framework and scripts to support the new type of browser may not be worth the effort if the risk is low that new defects will be found. A risk analysis should be done including the whole team and a collaborative decision should be made.
B. Correct – The decision to modify the test automation framework and scripts should be done collaboratively with the whole team. The tester is then responsible to make changes to the iteration plan as required.
C. Incorrect – The tester must notify the team who will then together decide what to do with the issue.
D. Incorrect – It is not up to the tester alone to determine scope of work. This issue will be addressed by creating a new user story or modifying an existing user story, and will be addressed by the entire team during sprint planning.

Correct Answer : a

Correct Answer 2: d

Explanation:
A. Correct – The information from the risk analysis is used during poker planning sessions to determine priorities of items to be completed in the iteration. Only after the poker planning sessions, would items be added to the backlog if it is determined that not all items can be completed in the iteration.
B. Incorrect - At this point, we do not know if we have time to complete all tasks in the iteration. Just because something is high risk does not mean it will take a lot of effort to complete. We would only know after poker planning sessions.
C. Incorrect – The iteration length of times are not extended. After the poker planning session, some items may be moved to backlog if determined there is not enough time to complete.
D. Correct – Risk mitigation can be done before test execution occurs to reduce the level of risk.
E. Incorrect – A planning poker session should be held first to determine what can be accomplished in the given iteration. If it is determined that there is not enough time to complete all items, it is probable that the lower risk items will be added to the backlog for future sprints.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – The customers and developers may have overlooked the difficulty of the test technique needed to validate the user story. Discussions must be held, and the entire team should be in agreement of the estimate.
B. Correct – Planning poker sessions should continue for the user story, until the entire team is satisfied with the estimated effort.
C. Incorrect – The entire team must agree on the estimate for the user story. The customer alone does not understand the complexity of developing or testing the functionality.
D. Incorrect – It is not necessary that they match, a rule could be made that the highest estimate is taken, or an average taken of all three estimates. This is up to the team to decide before the planning poker session.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
i. This is helpful since we know there is a new version of the standard; existing test cases will need to be modified or new ones will need to be added.
ii. This is helpful during the risk analysis phase.
iii. This information is not helpful, since user access is changing with the new release of the device and new user stories have been documented.
iv. Because new technology is being introduced, baselines should be obtained using devices with similar technology or defined performance requirements for this type of technology.
v. This is helpful during the risk analysis phase.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – Both test cases and test charters are used as a basis for what to test. The numberof executed test cases does not give any information about what has been covered (The number of test charters do not give any valuable information about coverage, either).

B. Incorrect – This statement in itself is insufficient. It needs to be backed up by supporting information regarding test coverage and risks involved

C. Correct – The obtained test coverage with supporting information makes it the best choice, even if more information would be needed. This includes information about found defects, their severity of occurrence, and taxonomy (how many serious problems in each area). This information gives a more complete basis for a release decision. You would also need information regarding the evaluated characteristics and how they affect the total picture
regarding the completion of the system, and the related testing.

D. Incorrect – The finish of an iteration/sprint implies that you stop testing when there is no more
time which is not the best criteria for when to stop testing

Correct Answer : b

Correct Answer 2: c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – not testable, there are no details on the type of white box testing or the coverage
expected.
B. Correct – this is testable.
C. Correct – this is testable.
D. Incorrect – not testable, we do not know what is a reasonable response time.
E. Incorrect – not testable, need to specify which browsers. One could make assumptions on
what the major browsers are.

Correct Answer : d

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – see justification below.
B. Incorrect – see justification below.
C. Incorrect – see justification below.
D. Correct – see justification below.

i. Incorrect – User story is specific to customers’ transaction history.
ii. Correct – This test is specific to a bank teller role and results in viewing customer’s bank transactions.
iii. Correct – This test is specific to a bank teller role and results in viewing customer’s bank transactions.
iv. Correct – This test is specific to a bank teller role and results in viewing customer’s bank transactions.
v. Incorrect – User story does not mention performance requirements.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – The focus of this user story is not on the state of the system; instead the expectation is to test shipping costs.
B. Incorrect – The focus of this user story is not on whether the item is shipped as expected; the expectation is to test shipping costs.
C. Correct – BVA is the best option when testing shipping costs.
D. Incorrect – The focus of this user story is not on whether the item is shipped as expected, the expectation is to test shipping costs.

Correct Answer : a

Explanation:
A. Correct – This is not a valid reason because exploratory testing cannot prevent defects from occurring due to the concurrent, reactionary nature of analysis, design and execution of the tests.
B. Incorrect – Exploratory testing is known as an experienced based approach to testing, which will be as effective as the tester running the tests. The benefit of this approach is that the tests that will be designed and executed will influence the next set of tests that are designed and executed.
C. Incorrect – Exploratory testing is not a technique but an approach to testing that can use other techniques such as pairwise, classification trees, boundary value analysis etc.
D. Incorrect – One of the benefits of using exploratory testing is when there are requirements that are less than perfect, and within agile projects there is limited analysis, depth and detail of requirements.

Correct Answer : c

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This would be one of the purposes of a wiki, not an ALM tool.
B. Incorrect – This would be one of the purposes of a Continuous Integration (CI) tool, not an ALM tool.
C. Correct – This is one of many purposes of an ALM tool, but using the tool allows more collaboration with distributed teams than physical task boards.
D. Incorrect – This would be one of the purposes of a data generation and data load tool, not an ALM tool.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect – This is true, see section 3.3.5 of syllabus.
B. Correct – Test charters are created prior to execution which include test objectives and test ideas.
C. Incorrect – This is true, see section 3.3.4 of syllabus.
D. Incorrect – This is true; the tester needs good understanding of how the system is used and how to determine when it fails.

Correct Answer : b

Explanation:
A. Incorrect –options2, 3, & 4 are incorrect – see (B) for correct answer.
B. Correct – The Manifesto consists of 4 key values: Individuals and Interactions over processes
and tools; Working software over comprehensive documentation; Customer collaboration over
contract negotiation; Responding to change over following a plan.
C. Incorrect – 1 & 4 are incorrect – see (B) for correct answer.
D. Incorrect – all options incorrect – see (B) for correct answer.

Correct Answer : a

Correct Answer 2: e

Explanation:
A. Correct – This is one of the hallmarks of agile projects.
B. Incorrect – Many agile project teams still have independent test teams with test managers
C. Incorrect – Testing is still a specialized role in agile, when done properly.
D. Incorrect – Developers and testers work collaboratively to develop and test a feature.
E. Correct – Agile teams can employ various forms of acceptance testing.