10 free ISTQB CTFL v4.0 practice questions with the correct answer and a full explanation for each, taken from the CertStash pack of 242 questions. Work through them, then open each answer to check your reasoning.
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Question 1
What is one potential benefit of using a test automation tool?
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Correct answer: B. Ease of access to statistics about test progress
A test automation tool executes tests and records what happened, so the numbers needed to report progress, tests run, passed, failed, and coverage achieved, fall out of the tool as a by-product. That easy access to objective statistics about test progress is one of the standard benefits of automation.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Automation changes how tests are run, not how well defects are written up. The quality of a defect report depends on the person raising it.
- C. Automation adds artifacts such as scripts, test data, and results, so it consumes more storage rather than removing the need to version test artifacts.
- D. Network traffic is a property of the system under test and how it is deployed. Automating the tests does not reduce it, and running more tests may increase it.
Question 2
Which of the following is a benefit of early stakeholder feedback?
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Correct answer: C. The developers get a better understanding of what they are building
Feedback gathered early tells the team whether what is being built is what is actually wanted, while there is still time to act on it. The direct benefit is that developers understand the product they are building, so misunderstandings are corrected before they are coded rather than after.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Waiting until the product is in production to act on the feedback removes the whole advantage of gathering it early, because changes then cost far more.
- B. Helping a project manager anticipate changes for a future version is a side effect at best. The point of early feedback is to correct the current work.
- D. Test automation requirements are a technical concern for the test team. Stakeholder feedback is about the product's behaviour and value.
Question 3
Which of the following is a good testing practice that applies regardless of the specific software development lifecycle being used?
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Correct answer: C. Ensuring there is a corresponding testing activity for every software development activity
Whatever lifecycle is in use, one practice always holds: every development activity has a corresponding testing activity. That is what keeps testing in step with development instead of arriving at the end, and it applies equally to sequential, iterative, and incremental models.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Stand-up meetings belong to particular Agile practices. A sequential project may hold no stand-ups at all.
- B. The right level of test case documentation depends on the context, and detailed ste-y-step scripting is often inappropriate in a fast-moving iterative project.
- D. Acceptance criteria are an Agile artifact tied to user stories. They are not present in every lifecycle.
Question 4
In an Agile development model, the completion of testing or “done” is defined by which of the following?
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Correct answer: C. Exit criteria
In Agile development, what counts as done is captured as a set of conditions the work must satisfy before it can be considered complete. Those conditions are exit criteria, also known as the definition of done, and testing is complete when they are met.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Project management may agree the criteria but does not itself define completion. The criteria do.
- B. Entry criteria say when testing can start, such as a stable build being available. They say nothing about when it is finished.
- D. An expected completion date is a plan. Reaching a date does not mean the work satisfies the conditions for being done.
Question 5
You are testing web application software that allows a person to use their travel points to make flight and hotel reservations.
When the user logs into the software (username/password) they are presented with a set of options. From that set of options, they can pick the following:
1. View points balance
2. Make flight reservation
3. Make hotel reservation
From the login page, they can log in successfully or might fail and need to try again. Once they login successfully they can go to either the view points, flight reservation or hotel reservation page.
Which of the following is the correct list of the transitions (a transition is shown as >) that should be tested, assuming that the test ends when a reservation state is reached.
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Correct answer: C. Login > Login, Login > Points, Login > Flight, Login > Hotel, Points > Flight, Points > Hotel
Hotel, Points > Flight, Points > Hotel The states are Login, Points, Flight, and Hotel, and testing stops once a reservation state is reached. From Login the user can fail and return to Login, or succeed and reach Points, Flight, or Hotel. From Points the user can then go on to Flight or Hotel. That gives Login to Login, Login to Points, Login to Flight, Login to Hotel, Points to Flight, and Points to Hotel, which is exactly the list in option C.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Points to Reservation names a state that does not exist and misses every other transition in the model.
- B. This omits the failed login self-transition and the two transitions from Login straight to a reservation page.
- D. Flight to Hotel, Hotel to Flight, Flight to Login, and Hotel to Login all continue past a reservation state, and the test is defined to end there.
Question 6
Which of the following is an advantage of the whole team approach?
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Correct answer: A. Any person in the team with the right skills can perform any task
In the whole team approach the team as a whole owns quality, and work is pulled by whoever has the skills to do it rather than pushed to a named specialist. Anyone with the right skills being able to take on any task is what gives the approach its flexibility and removes handover delays.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Locking a task to one owner until completion is the opposite of the whole team approach and reintroduces the bottleneck it removes.
- C. Under this approach quality is owned by the whole team. Giving testers exclusive ownership of quality is the traditional model it replaces.
- D. Business representatives are part of the whole team, not excluded from it. Their involvement throughout is a defining feature.
Question 7
If you are using test results to learn more about the software and are then creating additional tests based on those results, what type of testing are you doing?
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Correct answer: A. Exploratory
Learning about the software from the results of the tests just run, and using that learning to design the next tests, is the defining loop of exploratory testing. Test design, execution, and learning happen together rather than design being completed before execution starts.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Decision-based is not a recognised test technique name in the syllabus. Decision testing is a white-box coverage measure, designed from the code rather than from prior results.
- C. Checklist-based testing works from a prepared list of items to cover. The list is written before execution and is not derived from results as they arrive.
- D. Control flow analysis is a static, white-box activity performed on the code structure, not a way of designing tests from execution results.
Question 8
You are working on calculating the estimation for a project. You have been given the following numbers by your manager, who is considered to be an expert in estimation:
• Optimistic = 35 days
• Likely = 40 days
• Pessimistic = 65 days
Apply the three-point estimation technique, what is the proper expression of the final estimate?
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Correct answer: D. E is 43.3 days, SD = 5
The three-point technique weights the most likely estimate four times as heavily as the optimistic and pessimistic ones. E equals the optimistic plus four times the likely plus the pessimistic, all divided by six, which is 35 plus 160 plus 65 over 6, giving 43.3 days. The standard deviation is the pessimistic minus the optimistic divided by six, which is 65 minus 35 over 6, giving 5.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. The estimate of 46.3 does not follow from the formula, and a standard deviation of 35 is simply the optimistic figure repeated.
- B. 40 days is the most likely value used unchanged, which ignores the long pessimistic tail the technique exists to account for.
- C. This swaps the two results, quoting a standard deviation larger than the estimate itself.
Question 9
Which black-box technique should be used to verify different responses of the system, depending on its current conditions or previous history?
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Correct answer: C. State transition testing
When the response to the same input depends on what has happened before, the system has states, and the technique for that is state transition testing. It models the states, the events that cause transitions between them, and the resulting actions, so tests can cover the behaviour that history determines.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Use case testing derives tests from the interactions between an actor and the system for a given goal. It does not model the effect of previous history on the response.
- B. Decision table testing handles combinations of conditions that hold at one moment. It has no notion of what happened before.
- D. Equivalence partitioning divides an input domain into classes expected to be handled alike. It does not consider prior state at all.
Question 10
You have been given the following story:
As a help desk worker –
I want to enter a caller’s birth date So the system can display the caller’s account information As a team, you have developed the following table of acceptance criteria:
You have developed the following test cases and will execute them in the specified order:
1. Enter a valid date and verify that the account retrieved matches the birth date entered.
2. Enter an invalid date and verify that the error indicates the date is invalid.
3. Verify that the date prompt is already formatted for the date with xx/xx/xx format.
4. Enter a valid date and verify that two pages of account information are readable.
5. Enter a valid date and verify that the response occurs within 2 seconds when the system is under an average load.
What is incorrect about this approach?
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Correct answer: C. The test cases are not being executed in the proper order
The problem is the order rather than the content. Test case 3 checks that the date prompt is already formatted with the xx/xx/xx mask, which is a precondition for entering dates at all and should therefore run before the cases that enter them, and the performance case should run once the functional behaviour is known to work. Running them in the order given means later cases depend on behaviour that has not been confirmed.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. None of the five test cases is a security test. Access control appears in the acceptance criteria but no test case covers it.
- B. Test cases do not have to carry navigation steps and SQL statements. The right level of detail depends on the context, and high-level cases are perfectly valid.
- D. Every one of the five cases states what is to be verified, so expected results are present.
That was 10 of 242.
The full ISTQB CTFL v4.0 pack has all 242 questions, each with the answer, the explanation and why the other options are wrong, plus a questions-only copy for timed runs. US$39, paid once, with free monthly updates and a pass-or-your-money-back guarantee.