ISTQB CTAL-TM Exam Questions Simulate Actual CTAL-TM Exam

1. SCENARIO 3

You are the Test Manager for a software house called "MakeMyApp" that specialise in mobile phone applications, agile techniques are used for all software development projects.

A new project is underway to develop enhancements to a 'photo sharing' application, known as 'PictureFriend'. There are two types of user account available -Premium Users and Guest Users. Guest users only have limited functionality available.

The enhanced features to PictureFriend are:

• Feature 1: Guest Users can share photos with other Guest Users and Premium Users;

• Feature 2: Premium Users can edit pictures before posting to their account;

• Feature 3: Premium Users can create '3D-effect' photographs

The requirements for each feature will be broken down into a number of User Stories with acceptance criteria created for each of them. User Stories are planned and delivered in 2-week 'Sprints'. The project will have 3 sprints.

Refer to SCENARIO 3

You have been asked to select an appropriate review type and review remit for the project.

Which of the following is the BEST review type and remit for this project? SELECT ONE OPTION

2. You are Test Manager for a project which is in the Test Implementation stage for the first planned iteration, creation of the initial Test Cases and required test data is progressing well.

The Test Strategy documents the Stakeholders view that small teams should collaborate together to create and test functionality which is to be released in iterations, with each release building on the success of the last.

Stakeholders are willing to accept the risks of a partly working system in the early stages. Delivery of working functionality (particularly around interfaces to third party systems and performance of back end databases) is the priority for the early releases.

Which of the following test types would you select for this first planned iteration, in order to meet Stakeholders expectations?

a) Usability testing

b) Structural testing

c) Functional testing of process flows

d) Performance testing

e) Business process testing

f) Component integration testing

You are Test Manager for a project which is in the Test Implementation stage for the first planned iteration, creation of the initial Test Cases and required test data is progressing well.

The Test Strategy documents the Stakeholders view that small teams should collaborate together to create and test functionality which is to be released in iterations, with each release building on the success of the last.

Stakeholders are willing to accept the risks of a partly working system in the early stages. Delivery of working functionality (particularly around interfaces to third party systems and performance of back end databases) is the priority for the early releases.

Which of the following test types would you select for this first planned iteration, in order to meet Stakeholders expectations?

a) Usability testing

b) Structural testing

c) Functional testing of process flows

d) Performance testing

e) Business process testing

f) Component integration testing

3. You are the manager of a test team. You inherited most of these people from a previous manager who promoted technical skills, particularly programming skills. As a result, your people are very strong in test automation skills, white box testing and complex test design techniques. You have just been told that you can hire five new people. You want the new people to complement the existing skill sets and you want to be sure the team will have a strong mutual respect.

Given the following options, who should you hire? [3]

4. You are planning the testing for an emergency product update required to correct a serious security issue and to improve system maintainability of a key product in your company's catalogue. It has been estimated that the historical cost to the company for the security issue in this system has been $375,000.

In the last year a total of 10 reported "live' incidents were reported, resulting in a total external failure cost of S110.000 to correct.

The cost of prevention for this project has been estimated as $78,500 and from the development you have learned that the average cost of detection was $1,250 and the average cost of internal failure was $7,450

Which one of the following statements about cost of quality is TRUE? SELECT ONE OPTION

5. You are Test Manager on a major project that is of strategic importance to your company. Your team has access to a suite of testing tools that provide support across the development life cycle and this suite of tools has been in place for the last two projects. You are concerned that the suite does not have an integrated defect management tool and have negotiated a small budget to find and implement such a tool. Your first choice is an open source tool that has been available for just over a year and appears to be popular with its users, who have found it easy to learn. The main disadvantage of the tool would be that current manual defect management processes would need to be modified to embrace use of the tool.

Which of the following would be the MAIN risk to consider in deciding whether or not to acquire the defect management tool? SELECT ONE OPTION

6. Your company is installing a third-party enterprise-wide business software package. This is the first time the company has done anything like this.

Which technique would be the best one to use to estimate the testing effort? [3]

7. In a standard defect lifecycle. which of the following states would MOST LIKELY require input or action from a member of the Test team? SELECT ONE OPTION

8. You are a Test Manager at a company that develops mobile phone applications.

Based on historical data in your company, you have calculated the following average metrics for system testing:

• for each 100 LOC (Lines Of Code). 4 test cases are executed

• each test case takes on average 15 minutes to execute and check

• for each 1000 LOC, 5 defects are found

You have used this information to create an estimate for the system testing of a new mobile phone application being developed to submit gas and electricity readings.

The application delivered for system testing has 50.000 lines of code. At the end of system testing,

250 defects are discovered.

Assume that:

• the system test of the new mobile phone application will require the same amount of effort as previous applications

• defect density = number of defects/1000 LOC

• no new tools or processes have been introduced to the test team

Based only on the given information, which one of the following statements is true about this new mobile phone application? SELECT ONE OPTION

9. You are Test Manager working on a project which is improving the user interface for its call centre staff handling customer enquiries. The project has completed UAT for the first iteration; however a large number of defects were raised by call centre staff seconded to help with the User Acceptance testing.

The defects described the user interface as not being intuitive enough with a poor 'help' facility. A user representative spent a week working with developers and system testers to explain the issues, which were subsequently agreed to have resulted from poorly specified usability requirements. The requirements were defined separately for each iteration and have been formally reviewed by business analysts, developers and the IT director.

The user representative was also able to answer a number of other questions that the system test team had regarding call centre workflows, which improved their domain knowledge.

You have been asked to conduct a project retrospective and recommend improvements for the next iteration which introduces further user interface changes.

Which of the following would be the MOST effective improvement for the next iteration?

10. Refer to SCENARIO 2

You have been tasked with recruiting testers for Project 3 to help design and run regression tests, you have been provided with a skills matrix for four prospective candidates.

The matrix shows the skill level (High or Low) for each candidate:





Which candidate would be the MOST suitable for a test analyst role on Project 3? SELECT ONE OPTION

11. As a Test Manager, which one of the following do you think is the MOST important reason for ensuring effective processes are in place for test monitoring and reporting? SELECT ONE OPTION

12. Refer to SCENARIO 2 It has been agreed that the following test planning documents will be produced;

• A single overarching document outlining the general testing methodology for the whole programme of work

• A subordinate test plan for each of the three projects

• A separate test plan for performance testing within each project

Which one of the following options BEST describes the type of test management document that will meet the programme requirements?

13. You are performing a risk assessment for a financial application using quantitative risk analysis.

The following is a table describing the analysis undertaken so far:





Which of the following statements correctly describes the outcome of the risk assessment using the "Cost of Exposure" technique in this scenario? SELECT ONE OPTION

14. The test team is using a distributed model for testing.

What is the primary factor you should consider with this model? [1]

15. Which of the following can demotivate a tester? [1]

16. What is the primary use for the traceability information regarding the relationship between test results and test conditions during test execution? [2]

A. The Test Manager uses this information to control the test execution effort.

B. The development manager uses this information to determine how many developer resources to allocate to defect repair.

C. The project manager uses this information to determine if the project is on schedule.

D. The tester uses this information to determine which test should be run next.

17. Which one of the following statements correctly describes how product quality risks should be mitigated and managed? SELECT ONE OPTION

18. A test team is working long hours to achieve a deadline for release of a new product which has had problems throughout development and is well behind schedule.

Which of the following is most likely to have a MOTIVATING effect on the testers in the team? SELECT ONE OPTION

19. Automated tests may be run before or in parallel with manual tests

The project Test Plan has allocated 6 weeks to complete all test execution, with functional testing taking 3 weeks to execute, performance and security testing 2 weeks each and regression testing 1 week.

Which of the following options places the test suites (TS1 to TS5) in the correct order for test execution? SELECT ONE OPTION

20. Which of the following statements is true regarding documentation standards? [2]

21. The design, implementation and execution of tests to mitigate the quality risks

2 Extensive use of checklists to test web page navigation

3 Exploratory test sessions to be integrated into the test schedule Consider the following test strategies:

a. Analytical test strategy

b Methodical test strategy

c. Process or standard compliant test strategy

d Reactive test strategy

e. Regression-averse test strategy

Which three of these strategies is MOST appropriate for this organisation?

22. You are the Test Manager of a risk-based testing effort. You develop the following graph to show residual risk. Assume that "Risks mitigated" represents passed tests and "Risks not mitigated" represents failed tests and other discovered failures.

Which of the following answers best represents what the graph shows? [3]

23. You have done a comprehensive risk analysis. You have involved the appropriate people in assessing the risks and determining the likelihood and impact of those risks. You have been testing for three months and have been able to mitigate 75% of the high risk items. You have two weeks left in testing and you now do not expect to be able to complete all the items on the high-risk mitigation list, never mind any from the medium or low-risk lists.

What is the most effective action you should take? [3]

24. You are the Test Manager on a new project. The schedule is aggressive and will require the team to

work at peak efficiency. The requirements are not well defined yet, but it is clear that the

project will be using new technologies. To help the developers meet the development schedule, an

offshore group will be added to the development team.

At this time there is not enough budget to add more testing resources. The project stakeholders are very concerned about the quality of delivered product and will be watching the project closely, particularly during the testing cycles. The exit criteria from the system test level require no open high priority/severity defects, 100% pass rate for all test cases covering risks that are classified as "high" or "very high", 90% pass rate for all "medium" risks and 50% pass rate for all "low" and "very low" risks.

Given this information, which lifecycle model should you recommend? [3]

25. During what step of the Fundamental Test Process should you define the methods to be used to collect test metrics? [1]

26. Your testing team has just received the test conditions for a new project. You are conducting Test Design activities for this project. Your team feels that it would be beneficial to create high-level test cases.

What should they do concurrently with creating these test cases? [2]

27. The Test Manager must assemble team members that have which of the following characteristics? [1]

28. Which three of the following would be considered a good mix of technical and interpersonal skills (hard and soft), for a test team leader?

a. Ability to compliment a developer.

b. Presenting information regarding a test project progress to stakeholders

c. Using a configuration management tool.

d. Ability to read a development coding language

e. Assessing a failure and documenting it correctly.

29. Refer to SCENARIO 2

Which two of the following are test strategies that would need to be implemented to meet the objectives defined in the Safe as Houses' test policy?

a. Analytical strategy

b. Reactive strategy c Methodical strategy

d. Regression averse strategy

e. Process compliant strategy

30. Refer to SCENARIO 2

You are the test manager for Project 3 and have performed a skills assessment of your Safe as Houses' test team. You must now decide what training or skills development is required.





The matrix shows the skill level (5 being highest, 1 lowest) for each team member.

Which two of the above skills need the closest attention for potential training or development on this project? SELECT ONE OPTION

31. Which of the following describes the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) risk analysis technique? SELECT ONE OPTION

32. An old stock control system is being decommissioned and replaced with a new system that has been running successfully in the live environment for the last few months.

The stakeholders would like to C • retain historical information held in the database to comply with their data retention policy (which requires order information to be retained for 7 years)

• query the historical information by running pre-written SQL queries.

• all commands must be invoked by keyboard as one of the end users is unable to use a mouse The pre-written SQL queries will be designed, developed and tested by the developers who are decommissioning the system and writing the data migration routine.

As the system to be decommissioned is integrated to other systems that will remain operational, the stakeholders have requested that testing incorporates all systems that are part of the stock control suite.

The stakeholders and project manager have identified the following risks, in priority order -

• 1st - Data has not been successfully migrated to an archived data store, resulting in the inability to query past stock levels and re-order details.

• 2nd - Historical data for the last 7 years is unavailable, resulting in the failure to meet the data retention policy.

• 3rd - Failure of existing systems within the stock control suite, adversely affecting the operational running of the business

The risks are to form the basis of the test objectives.

Which three of the following test activities, work products and/or resources achieves the test objectives?

a. Use of the live database to test the data migration does not corrupt or lose data b. A test plan detailing the test approach for ST. SIT & OT test levels

c. Accessibility testing of the pre-defined SQL queries

d. Security and Penetration testing of the archived database

e Performance testing of the data migration exercise to ensure it completes in the time specified by the stakeholders

f. Functional testing of the pre-defined SQL queries

g. Regression testing of the end to end process for maintaining specified stock levels.

33. Which of the following organizational structures would be considered unorthodox? [1]

34. Cost estimate must not be exceeded

System integration test execution is scheduled to last 5 weeks, with week 5 reserved for regression and bug fixing only.

At the end of week 3 the following test report has been produced (figures on a week by week basis, not cumulative):





b. Open severity 2 and 3 defects

c. Interface testing progress

d. Development resource for debugging

e. Available budget

SELECT ONE OPTION

35. Refer to SCENARIO 3

Which of the following are test planning activities that would be MOST appropriate for Sprint 1?

a) Analyse the risk for each of the user stories in sprint 1

b) Publish lest progress reports throughout the sprint

c) Arrange informal reviews of the user stories by the test team

d) Plan an automated system test suite for the user stories.

e) Specify system test conditions at a detailed level for all user stories Chose one of the following options:

SELECT ONE OPTION

36. While mining the defect database for patterns of problems in the last release, a Test Manager notices that many of the most damaging failures were caused by defects injected during the low-level design phase.

Which of the following actions will likely give this project the most effective solution to this problem? [3]

37. Your test process is fully integrated into the software development lifecycle. You are at which TMMi level? [1]

38. Test results are reported as "Requirements tested, passed, and failed".

What test strategy are you using? [1]

39. Which technique will assist you in determining targeted improvement areas to reduce the number of

defects? [1]

40. Referring to SCENARIO 2 It has been agreed that Project 1 will be delivered using an Agile approach, with user stories delivered across three sprints, each lasting 4 weeks. The programme manager is concerned about RISK 3 and wants the Master Test Plan to specify an effective test process improvement approach.

Which of the following is the best test process improvement approach for Project 1? SELECT ONE OPTION

41. You have been promoted to Test Manager within your company. Your new manager states that your test team utilized a risk-based test approach for the last release but in production, a number of serious failures in lightly tested areas have occurred.

What would be your first action prior to the start of the next test phase for the next release? [3]