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ISTQB Chapter 1 Practice Questions: Fundamentals of Testing

Chapter 1 is 8 of the 40 questions on the real exam, the third-largest block, and it tops out at K2 - you are never asked to apply a technique here. Almost every mark is available to someone who knows the definitions precisely, which makes this the highest-return chapter per hour of study in the whole syllabus.

Every question in this drill comes from chapter 1, Fundamentals of Testing, which is 8 of the 40 questions on the real exam.

What chapter 1 covers

The syllabus sections this drill draws from.

  • 1.1 What is testing - objectives, testing and debugging
  • 1.2 Why is testing necessary - contribution to success, quality assurance, errors/defects/failures, defects and root causes
  • 1.3 Testing principles - the seven principles
  • 1.4 Test activities, testware and test roles - the test process, testware, traceability, roles
  • 1.5 Essential skills and good practices - whole team approach, independence of testing

Most wrong answers here are the neighbouring concept. See the 5 concepts this drill separates before you start, or work the drill first and use them to check your misses.

Start the drill

Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL v4.0)

Practising Chapter 1 only: every question in this set matches that filter. There is no clock - a drill is shorter than a real paper and covers one topic, so timing it would tell you nothing. Work at your own pace and submit when you are ready; you get a full answer review when you finish.

Questions
0
Time limit
None
Pass mark
65%
Cost
Free

No timer on a drill - take as long as you need.

How this level is examined

The chapter's spine is a set of distinctions the exam tests over and over: testing against debugging, error against defect against failure, quality assurance against testing, verification against validation. Each is examined by describing one of the pair and offering the other as a distractor, so knowing a definition in isolation is not enough - you have to know where it stops.

The seven testing principles are the single most heavily examined item in the chapter. Learn them as claims with limits rather than as slogans. 'Testing shows the presence of defects' is a one-directional statement and the exam will offer you its converse. 'Tests wear out' is about a fixed set of tests losing effectiveness, not about tests expiring. The absence-of-defects fallacy is about meeting a specification while failing to meet a need.

Section 1.4's test activities and the idea of traceability between the test basis and testware come back in chapters 4 and 5, so time spent here pays twice. If you are weak on this chapter, the rest of the syllabus will feel harder than it is.

Concepts this drill separates

Separate these and the distractors stop working, because there is nothing plausible left for a wrong answer to be built from.

Verification versus Validation

Verification asks whether the product was built to the specification; validation asks whether the specified product was the right one to build.

How to tell them apart: Both are checked against something written down, so the specification is not the tell. Ask whose satisfaction settles it - conformance to the stated requirement is verification, fitness for the user's actual need is validation. Acceptance testing focuses on validation.

Root Cause leads to Error leads to Defect leads to Failure

A root cause is what led a person to make an error, the error leaves a defect in a work product, and the defect may cause a failure when the software runs.

How to tell them apart: Walk the chain and find where the question sits. Only a failure is something you can observe happening; a defect sits in an artefact whether or not anyone runs it; the root cause is what, if removed, would stop the error recurring. The chain is closed at neither end: some defects never cause a failure, and a failure can also come from environmental conditions such as radiation, with no error behind it.

Quality Assurance versus Quality Control versus Testing

Quality assurance is process-oriented and preventive; testing is product-oriented and corrective, and is one major form of quality control alongside formal methods, simulation and prototyping.

How to tell them apart: Ask whether the activity changes how the work is done or examines what the work produced. Improving the process is QA. The containment matters in the other direction too: all testing is quality control, but not all quality control is testing.

Testing versus Debugging

Dynamic testing shows that a failure occurred; debugging is the development activity that then finds the defect causing it, analyses it, and removes it.

How to tell them apart: The defect is debugging's output, not its input - do not confuse it with root cause analysis, which looks further back at why the error was made. Static testing finds defects directly, with no failure and nothing to debug, so 'a failure was observed' is not part of the definition of testing.

Test Objective versus Test Condition

A test objective is why you are testing at all; a test condition is a specific aspect of the test object that a test could be built to exercise.

How to tell them apart: Objectives are stated once for a level or a project and are about purpose - building confidence, finding defects, meeting criteria. Conditions are enumerated during test analysis and are countable. If the question asks what test analysis produced, it wants conditions.

Worked examples

These 5 come with the answer and the reasoning already shown, so you can see what this kind of question looks like before you start. They are drawn from the questions-and-answers page and are deliberately held out of the drill above, so the drill still tells you something you did not already know.

  1. 1. Which principle states testing cannot prove absence of defects?

    K1
    • A.Early testing saves time and money
    • B.Testing shows the presence, not the absence, of defects
    • C.Tests wear out
    • D.Exhaustive testing is impossible

    Correct answer: B

    Testing can reveal that defects are present but can never prove there are none. The absence-of-defects fallacy is a different principle: that a defect-free system may still fail to meet user needs.

  2. 2. What is the purpose of traceability between the test basis and testware?

    K2
    • A.It proves the code is defect free
    • B.It makes coverage measurable and supports impact analysis when the test basis changes
    • C.It guarantees all requirements are correct
    • D.It removes the need for a test plan

    Correct answer: B

    Linking testware back to the test basis is what allows coverage to be assessed and change impact to be understood.

  3. 3. What is the difference between testing and debugging?

    K2
    • A.They are two names for the same activity
    • B.Testing is performed by developers; debugging by testers
    • C.Testing shows that failures occur; debugging finds and fixes the defect that caused them
    • D.Debugging always precedes testing

    Correct answer: C

    Testing can trigger a failure. Debugging then locates the underlying defect, corrects it, and checks the correction.

  4. 4. Which statement BEST distinguishes quality assurance from testing?

    K1
    • A.Testing is a subset of quality control that excludes quality assurance activities entirely
    • B.Quality assurance is performed only by managers
    • C.Quality assurance is process oriented; testing is product oriented
    • D.They are the same discipline under different names

    Correct answer: C

    QA works on the process that produces the product, on the basis that a good process yields a good product. Testing evaluates the product itself.

  5. 5. What does the absence-of-defects fallacy describe?

    K2
    • A.That testing can prove a system contains no defects
    • B.That defect-free code cannot be delivered late
    • C.That a system can be free of defects against its specification and still fail to meet user needs
    • D.That finding and fixing many defects guarantees a successful system

    Correct answer: C

    Correctness against the specification is not the same as usefulness. If the specification was wrong, a defect-free build is still the wrong product.

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