Istqb Foundation Level

FOUNDATIONS OF SOFTWARE TESTING
ISTQB CERTIFICATION
Dorothy Graham Erik van Veenendaal Isabel Evans Rex Black

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii Preface ix 1 Fundamentals of testing 1 1.1 Why is testing necessary? 1 1.2 What is testing? 11 1.3 Testing principles 18 1.4 Fundamental test process 20 1.5 The psychology of testing 26 Chapter review 31 Sample exam questions 32 Exercise: Testpsychology 33 Exercise solution 34 2 Testing throughout the software life cycle 35 2.1 Software development models 35 2.2 Test levels 41 2.3 Test types: the targets of testing 46 2.4 Maintenance testing 50 Chapter review 54 Sample exam questions 55 3 Static techniques 57 3.1 Reviews and the test process 57 3.2 Review process 59 3.3 Static analysis by tools 69 Chapter review 74 Sample exam questions 75 4Test design techniques 77 4.1 Identifying test conditions and designing test cases 77 4.2 Categories of test design techniques 84 4.3 Specification-based or black-box techniques 87 4.4 Structure-based or white-box techniques 105 4.5 Experience-based techniques 112 4.6 Choosing a test technique 114 Chapter review 117 Sample exam questions 118 Exercises: Test design techniques 121 Exercise solutions122 5 Test management 127 5.1 Test organization 127 5.2 Test plans, estimates, and strategies 132

5.3 Test progress monitoring and control 142 5.4 Configuration management 148 5.5 Risk and testing 149 5.6 Incident management 155 Chapter review 161 Sample exam questions 162 Exercise: Incident report 165 Exercise solution 166 6 Tool support for testing 169 6.1 Types of test tool 169 6.2Effective use of tools: Potential benefits and risks 184 6.3 Introducing a tool into an organization 190 Chapter review 193 Sample exam questions 195 7 ISTQB Foundation Exam 197 Preparing for the exam 197 Taking the exam 199 Mock exam 201 Glossary 209 Answers to sample exam questions 227 References 231 Authors 237 Companies 239 Index 243

CHAPTER 1 Fundamentals of testing

chapter, will to thefundamentals of testing: why In thistesting; theweprocessintroduce youfollow; and some of thethe principles testing is needed; its limitations, objectives and purpose; behind that testers psychological factors that testers must consider in their work. By reading this chapter you'll gain an understanding of the fundamentals of testing and be able to describe those fundamentals.

1.1 WHY IS TESTINGNECESSARY?

1 Describe, with examples, the way in which a defect in software can cause harm to a person, to the environment or to a company. (K2) 2 Distinguish between the root cause of a defect and its effects. (K2) 3 Give reasons why testing is necessary by giving examples. (K2) 4 Describe why testing is part of quality assurance and give examples of how testing contributes to higher quality.(K2) 5 Recall the terms 'mistake', 'defect', 'fault', 'failure' and the correspon ding terms 'error' and 'bug'. (Kl) 6 Explain the fundamental principles in testing. (K2) 1.1.1 Introduction In this section, we're going to kick off the book with a discussion on why testing matters. We'll describe and illustrate how software defects or bugs can cause problems for people, the environment or a company.We'll draw important distinctions between defects, their root causes and their effects. We'll explain why testing is necessary to find these defects, how testing promotes quality, and how testing fits into quality assurance. In this section, we will also introduce some fundamental principles of testing. As we go through this section, watch for the Syllabus terms bug, defect, error, failure, fault,mistake, quality, risk, software, testing and exhaustive testing. You'll find these terms defined in the glossary.

You may be asking 'what is testing?' and we'll look more closely at the definition of testing in Section 1.2. For the moment, let's adopt a simple everydaylife usage: 'when we are testing something we are checking whether it is OK'. We'll need to refine that when we define...