TESTING FUN on NET

ISTQB Foundation and Advance Level Certification

International Software Testing Qualifications Board {ISTQB}

This post describes about the preparation and general guide line of ISTQB foundation level and advance level certifications.

ISTQB – An Introduction:

•          ISTQB is a non-profit organization responsible for defining various guidelines such as examination structure and regulations, accreditation, certification etc.

•          The ISTQB was officially founded as an International Software Testing Qualifications Board in UK in November 2002

•          Rex Black (Chairman of ISTQB and US)

•          Working parties within the ISTQB are responsible for developing and maintaining the syllabi and exams. The ISTQB comprises representatives from each existing national board.

ITB – Indian Testing Board

•          Indian Testing Board was founded in February 2004 and it was granted permission by ISTQB in April 2004

•           ITB is responsible for conducting ISTQB Certified Tester examination in India.

•          Official Links:

–         www.istqb.org

–         http://www.istqb.in/

–         http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ISTQB-India

Foundation and Advanced Level Certification:

The Foundation Level exam tests for knowledge, not skill. It provides information about the certificate holder's level of familiarity with the most common concepts of software testing and the associated terminology.

The Foundation Level exam is a stepping stone towards the Advanced Level, which goes in-depth and is much more practice-oriented, wherefore it also requires 24 months experience as a software tester.

• Foundation Level: Knowledge.
• Advanced Level: Skill.

 

Eligibility

General Guidelines for Preparing ISTQB Exam – Foundation Level

• 40 Questions
• 65% pass mark
• 75 minutes
• Multiple choice questions
• Only one correct answer
• No negative marking
• online exam
• All questions from syllabus
• Read the syllabus very carefully
• Question breakup
• 50% K1 (remember, recall type)
• 30% K2 (Compare, contrast type)
• 20% K3 (Analyze, apply type. Numerical type as well)

Chapter	Number of Questions Expected from each chapter
The principles of testing	7
Testing throughout the life-cycle	6
Static testing	3
Test design techniques	12
Test management	8
Tool support for testing	4

General Guidelines for Preparing ISTQB Exam – Advanced Level

The Advance Level is aimed at experienced test professionals. This level shows that the person has detailed knowledge regarding testing and skills to apply this knowledge in practice

The exam has three sub levels:

• Technical Test Analyst
• Test Analyst
• Test Manager

Exam Pattern:

• 65 Questions (Each sub-level)
• 180 minutes (Each sub-level)
• 100 Marks (30 questions of 1 Mark, 35 questions of 2 marks)
• 65% pass mark
• No negative marking
• online exam
• All questions from syllabus
• Read the syllabus very carefully
• Question breakup
• 50% K1 (remember, recall type)
• 30% K2 (Compare, contrast type)
• 20% K3 (Analyze, apply type. Numerical type as well)

After the examination, each successful participant receives the “ISTQB-Certified-Tester” certificate.

For latest syllabus:

http://www.istqb.in/Syllabi.php

Validity period for this certification:

Ø    Foundation Level certificate is valid for Life Time

Ø    Advanced Level certificate is valid for 3 years.

How to Apply:

·         Exam may conducted based upon city

·         Fill the Online Enrollment Form (visit: http://www.istqb.in/Enrollment.php)

·         Send a D/D of amount specified in mail in favour of INDIAN TESTING BOARD, payable at 'NOIDA‘ to Noida or Bangalore Branch

Reference Book for cracking the certification:

For Foundation Level Exam:

1. FOUNDATIONS OF SOFTWARE TESTING - ISTQB CERTIFICATION

by Dorothy Graham, Erik van Veenendaal

Isabel Evans, Rex Black

For Advance Level Exam:

1. The Software Test Engineers Handbook ISTQB Test Analyst and Technical Analyst Advanced Level Certificates

Author: Graham Bath, Publisher: Rocky Nook

2. Advanced Software Testing Vol 1 Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an Advanced Test Analyst

Author: Rex Black, Publisher: Rocky Nook

» Tips and Tricks

• ISTQB level questions are simple but answers are confusing at most of the times. More than one correct answers possible. Choose the one which is more correct or correct in more scenarios.
• Read the questions very carefully. Sometimes you might miss important words. Solve ISTQB Sample Papers frequently.
• Do not jump to answer quickly. Go through all options before selecting one.
• Look out for words like ALL, EVERY, NEVER etc. These might help you choose correct answer.

Severity Vs Priority

In my experience, many novice testers are thinking both severity and priority are reflecting the same meaning. Is it so?. No. Both are completely differ.

While logging defect, SQA needs to fill severity and priority of the logging/recording defect.

Severity:

Severity is simply tells about how harmful/severe the defect is. In other term, we can tell how this defect is impacting the product. Severity is classified into Critical, Major, Minor, Cosmetic, Enhancement.

Critical: if the application crashes (showstopper) or hangs or huge vital information loss, sanity failures - we can say this kind of defect’s severity as Critical.

Major: incase of blocking issues, major functionality/feature flaws. These kinds of defects were generally blocking the tester to execute all testcases of a specific feature.

Minor: Minimal loss of functionality but not harmful, misbehavior of functionality like improper popup message to the user and all…

Cosmetic: Alignment issues, Spell mistakes, usability hurdles and all.

Enhancement: Nothing but new feature addition for the betterment of the software quality. These kinds of defects should be address in Requirements and in next phase of releases.

Priority:

Here Priority talks about how importance and scheduling this defect to fix it, by considering the defects weight age by the tester. In other words, from SQA point of view, requesting/instructing the developer to fix the defects based on the weight age but not based upon Severity. Last line might be little bit confusing rightJ. You will get clear picture while reading examples.

Based upon the defect SQA should set the Priority as P1 (High Priority), P2 (Medium Priority) and P3 (Low Priority) to indicate the developer to “Resolve immediately”, “Give More Attention” and “Normal Queue”.

Examples:

Defect1:

During phone call, mobile restarts automatically due to another incoming call.

This defects severity must be “Critical” and Priority also must be “High/Resolve Immediately” as mobile phone’s main functionality itself getting failure on another incoming calls.

Defect2:

S/w Application is working on all windows platforms (win 7, vista, win2k3, win2k8) expect win2k8 – 64 bit OS.

Severity: Critical

Priority: Low/Normal Queue à depends upon the weight age of customer’s specification on the environment priority gets differ here irrespective of severity state.

Defect3:

Mobile Message Application: In Roaming area, user is not able to send group message from the message application.

Severity: Minor (Major incase of single separate message sending failure and not group message)

Priority: Medium/Give high attention

Defect4:

a. Spell Mistake: Display of the customer name is in correct.

           
Severity: Critical

Priority: High

b. Spell Mistake: Display of label name is displaying as “Nmae” instead of “Name” at home page.

            Severity: Cosmetic

            Priority: High (Resolve immediately as it is displaying on the main page – all users will capture this)

Hope everyone understood the difference of severity and how to define priority as well.

Checklist - GUI Testing Test Scenarios/Testcases

Generic level of testcases for testing windows GUI applications:

Listed below checklist of GUI testing scenarios:

TC_ID	Test Scenarios	Headline	Testcase Description	Expected Result
GUI_001	Application.exe file	Check on application.exe and tool tip	1. Application.exe name should be in proper naming convention 2. Move on mouse over the application.exe file and check if application.exe is providing correct tool tip information to the user 3. Application.exe should  display meaningful representation of icon to the user. Note: Same application caption should reflect on everywhere like task manager, program manager...	Application.exe file must be displayed clearly and correctly.
GUI_002	Launching the application	Check on application icon and launching the application	1. Double click on application.exe icon 2. Check application should launch and displaying main screen UI to the user without any errors.	Application must be launched successfully
GUI_003	Application Termination	Closing the application	1. Launch the application 2. Close the application (by click on close button or File->Exit) 3. Ensure Conformation pop up message is displayed to the user.	Application should terminate gracefully
GUI_004	Multiple Instance support	Check on launching the application multiple times	1. Double click on the application.exe icon and launch the Instance 1 2. Again try to launch the 2nd instance of the application 3. Ensure Instance2 is not getting launched and Instance1's currently active windows remains the same	Instance1's active screen should displayed to the user and also only instance1 should be in task manager.
GUI_005	Title Bar	Check on Title Bar	1. Lanuch the application 2. Ensure title bar is displaying the application icon and followed by application name and it's version 3. Navigate to other window/screen and ensure on all navigation windows title bar remains the same	Application icon followed by the application name must be displayed in the title bar on the launch of the application.
GUI_006	Menu Bar	Check on Menu Bar	1. Launch the application 2. Menu bar should display at the top and bottom of the title bar. 3. Ensure Help, About button in all the screens for access	All screens should have a Help button, F1 should work doing the same. About should display on all the screen and it should display version informations
GUI_007	Status Bar	Check on Status Bar	1. Launch the application 2. Status bar should display progress of test execution and status information like disk info, testcases running or not, cursor pointing position and so on. 3. Ensure status bar is getting updated with dynamic changes	Status bar must get updated with the dynamic changes of the application.
GUI_008	Tool tip	Check the tool tip information on mouse over	1. Launch the application 2. Move the mouse on the widgets/icons 3. Ensure tool tip os shown to the user, whenever user mouse over on the widgets/icons	Tool tip must be clearly and correctly displayed to the user.
GUI_009	Shortcut keys	Check on Shortcut key	1. Launch the application 2. Ensure Shortcut key is supported to trigger the functionality without mouse click on the UI screens. Note: Ensure standard shortcut keys are followed. For Say: Ctrl+S is for Saving, Ctrl+Q for Quit and So on Note: Check the behavior of the TAB, ESC, Space bar, Enter keypress as well	Shortcut key should be supported on the application
GUI_010	Multiple selection on Hold keys (Control/Shift)	Multiple selection	Incase of selecting multiple choices, Ensure Application is supporting On Hold keys (Control and Shift key) to allow the user to select the multiple selections	Application should allow the user to select any multiple choices
GUI_011	Popup message box	Check on Popup message box	Ensure application is popuping appropriate message to the user in standard format. Note: For Ex: Error popup message should display Error icon on the popup box	All popup message should get display in standard format
GUI_012	Resize	Check on Resizing the dialog boxes	1. Launch the application 2. Resize the dialog boxes and/or screen frames if any 3. Ensure resizing of the box/frames should not affect the application viewability and functionality	Resizing of the box/frames should not affect the application viewability and functionality
GUI_013	Minimize, Maximize, Restore	Test to check the Minimize, Maximize, Restore properties	1. Launch the application 2. Check if user is able to minimize, maximize and restore to previous screen size display by pressing Minimize, Maximize and Restore buttons correspondingly.	Application should allow the user to minimize, maximize and restore.
GUI_014	Widget, frames alignments	Test to check for alignment of frames, text boxes and other Widgets	1. Launch the application 2. Check if application is displaying all the widgets in uniform and it’s alignments like text box, frames, radio/check options, text alignments, etc., 3. Ensure on resizing of the screen should not affect the aligments of text/widgets	All Widgets, text should displayed properly
GUI_015	Navigations	Test to check all screen navigation links	1. Launch the application 2. Navigate one screen to another screen 3. Check if user is able to navigate the screens without any ambiguous display or in delay in display	Application should display the screen without delay in loading and should not display any ambiguously.
GUI_016	Spell Check	Test to check for spell check	1. Launch the application 2. Ensure there is no spell mistake and verbal mistakes on the text display.	Application should display meaning ful words and without any spell check
GUI_017	Uniform Font Size and Style	Test to check for font display - like Color, Size, Style and Background color	1. Launch the application 2. Ensure application is displaying uniform text style, color and size. 3. Ensure display of text should be eye-catching and should not as eye-hitting one to the user.	Display of text should be eye-catching and should not as eye-hitting one to the user
GUI_018	Set Focus	Test to check for set focus on widgets	1. Launch the application 2. Ensure after filling/entering/tab any input fields, cursor should set focus on next widgets.	GUI should provide usablity of the end user on set focus.
GUI_019	Screen Resolution	Check under different screen resolution of 1280*1024, 1280*960, 1280*720, 1152*864, 1024*768, 800*60	1. Set different monitor screen resolution (1280*1024, 1280*960, 1280*720, 1152*864,1024*768,800*600) 2. Launch the application and ensure display of GUI is not changed	GUI should not display any ambiguous display and should not disturb on change in screen resolution
GUI_020	Input field validation	Check on input field validation - boundary value testing, maximum digits, special chars, maximum values	1. Fill the input field box with boundary values and check the exception handling 2. Fill the input field box with alpha numberic, special character including white space and check if application is handling the error exceptions 3. Fill the input field box with maximum values or maximum digits and check if application is handling the exception	Application should catch all kinds of exception and throw appropriate error message to the user

when i surf on net, i got one more useful GUI testing checklist link. Might be this link also helpful for you, here it is http://bazman.tripod.com/checklist.html

Checklist - Log File Module Test Scenarios/Testcases

Generic level of testcases for testing Log file module of the Application and it’s content testing scenario’s.

Listed below checklist of log file testing testcases:

TC_ID	Headline	Testcase Description	Expected Result
Log_001	Log file generation	1. Log file shall be generated after successful execution of the feature. 2. In default case, log file shall get generated in applications' installation directory else on a user defined path at runtime based on user preferance	Log file should get generated.
Log_002	Log file generation at user defined path	1. Launch the application and set the user defined path at the run time and close the application 2. Again re-launch the application and check if log file is getting generated on the user defined path	Application should generate log file under user defined path
Log_003	Log file extension	Check if log file extension is as per specification.	Log file extension should be as per specification
Log_004	Log file naming convention check	Check if log filename is with proper naming convention	Log filename should follow proper naming convention
Log_005	Log file size check	1. Launch the application and execute the testcases for couple days. 2. Check the log file content are getting updated in a single file or maintained in multiple files once log file size exceeding as per specification	As per log file policy and project requirements, it need to be takencare of log file size at maximum, limit of log files generation and all
Log_006	Log file content check	1. Launch the application and execute the set of testcases 2. Check if log file content are getting updated with proper timestamp, Device serial number, application version and messages Note: Sometimes there will be differenece on log file timestamp and local system timestamp	Log file content should be updated with proper timestamp and content
Log_007	Formatting and Fonts of log file	Ensure Formatting and Fonts used in log file are consistent and correct with neat alignment	Formatting and Fonts used in log file shall be consistent and correct
Log_008	incase of Single log file generation - Check on appending of file content	1. Launch the application and execute set of testcases 2. Ensure log file is captured all the content 3. Close the application and re-launch the application 4. Execute the set of testcases and check if log file content is getting appended and not overwritten on the same single log file	Log content should be get appended and should not overwrite the existing content.
Log_009	Incase of Single log file doesn't exists	1. Launch the application and execute set of testcases 2. Ensure log file is captured all the content 3. Close the application and delete the generated log file 4. Re-launch the application and execute the set of testcases 5. Check if log file is created newly and contents are captures on it.	Log file should get generated and all content should be updated.
Log_010	incase of single log file generation - check on multiple instance	1. Launch multiple instance of the application 2. Check the behavior of the application and log file generation/updation	incase application supports multiple instance, log file should be maintained with proper timestamp or convention instead of appending on a single log file
Log_011	Uninstallation of the application	1. Install and invoke the application 2. Execute any feature of the product that supports logging 3. Exit application execution 4. Explore log storage directory, validate recently generated log file is retained. 5. Un-install the application 6. Explore log storage directory, validate recently generated log file is retained.	Generated log file's should be retained.