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ISTQB K1 Practice Questions

K1 is recall, and it is about 20% of the exam - roughly 8 of the 40 questions. These are the marks you should never lose. A K1 question either knows you have read the syllabus or it does not; there is no reasoning step where you can recover from a gap.

The lists worth memorising outright

Most K1 marks come from a small number of enumerations. If you can produce these from memory, you have covered the bulk of the recall level.

  • The seven testing principles
  • The test activities: planning, monitoring and control, analysis, design, implementation, execution, completion
  • The four test levels: component, component integration, system, acceptance
  • The test types: functional, non-functional, black-box, white-box
  • The static testing review types: informal, walkthrough, technical review, inspection
  • The roles in a formal review: manager, author, moderator, scribe, reviewer, review leader
  • The tool categories supporting the test activities

Most wrong answers here are the neighbouring concept. See the 1 concept 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 K1 questions 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

K1 questions come in two shapes. The first asks for a definition directly: what a term means, or which of four statements matches the glossary. The second asks for membership of a list - which of these is a test level, which is not a static testing technique, which of these belongs to the test process. The list-membership shape is why the syllabus's enumerations are worth memorising outright: the test levels, the test types, the review types, the roles in a formal review, the tool categories.

The efficient way to close K1 is not practice questions at all - it is flashcards. A practice question tests one term per attempt; a flashcard deck tests fifty in the same time. Use this drill to find out which terms are still soft, then drill those terms directly and come back.

One trap worth naming: the exam sometimes uses a term's everyday meaning as a distractor. In ordinary English a 'defect' and a 'failure' are near-synonyms; in the syllabus they are strictly separated points in a causal chain. When a K1 question feels obvious, check that you are answering from the syllabus's definition and not from the word's normal sense.

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.

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.

Worked examples at K1

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. Who is responsible for the work product under review?

    K1
    • A.The review leader
    • B.The reviewers
    • C.The facilitator
    • D.The author

    Correct answer: D

    The author creates and owns the work product under review and is responsible for fixing the defects found.

  3. 3. Which task is performed by the facilitator (moderator) in a formal review?

    K1
    • A.Fixing the defects found
    • B.Writing the work product under review
    • C.Running the review meeting and mediating between participants
    • D.Deciding the commercial priority of the release

    Correct answer: C

    The facilitator (moderator) leads the meeting and mediates differing viewpoints.

  4. 4. Which of the following triggers maintenance testing?

    K1
    • A.Modification, migration and retirement of the system
    • B.Only the discovery of a defect in production
    • C.Writing the test plan for a new release
    • D.Completion of system testing

    Correct answer: A

    CTFL v4.0 section 2.3 classifies the triggers as modifications (planned enhancements, corrective changes, hot fixes), upgrades or migrations of the operational environment, and retirement of the application.

  5. 5. 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.

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