ISTQB K3 Practice: Chapter 4 Test Design Techniques

How this level is examined

Five of the syllabus's eight K3 objectives sit in chapter 4, and chapter 4 is already the heaviest chapter at 11 of 40 questions. That concentration is why this drill exists: it is the densest block of applied marks on the exam, and it is the one that most reliably separates candidates who have practised from candidates who have only read.

Work these with a pen. Equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis are quick once the partitions are written down and error-prone when done in your head - the classic slip is treating a boundary and the value beyond it as one test rather than two, which silently halves your count. Decision tables need the layout right: conditions and actions form the rows, and each column is one rule. State transition questions need the start state identified before you walk anything, and the invalid transitions are usually where the marks are.

ATDD is the fifth objective here and the one candidates least expect to be applied. You can be handed a user story with acceptance criteria and asked which test case correctly derives from them - which is a different skill from describing what ATDD is.

If this drill goes badly but the chapter 4 drill goes fine, your problem is execution under time pressure rather than knowledge, and the fix is repetition on the four procedures rather than re-reading the chapter.

Worked examples at K3

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.