ISTQB-AGILE Sample Questions & Answers
Agile testing methods, techniques and tools make up half the exam, well ahead of how agile testing differs from the traditional kind and what a tester's role looks like on an agile team, plus the fundamentals of agile development itself.
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- Question 1Beginner
Agile Testing Methods, Techniques, and Tools · FA-3.1.3 Summarize the testing quadrants and their relationships with testing levels and testing types
Which of the following BEST describes the primary purpose of the Agile Testing Quadrants?
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Correct answer: B
The Agile Testing Quadrants are a heuristic or model, not a rigid process. Their purpose is to guide a team in thinking about the different types and purposes of tests needed to achieve quality. It helps ensure that the team doesn't forget important test types, such as non-functional or exploratory tests, by providing a framework for discussion and planning.
- Question 2Advanced
Agile Testing Methods, Techniques, and Tools · FA-3.3.5 Perform exploratory testing to support the testing of an Agile project
A team is developing a mobile banking application. For the 'fund transfer' user story, they need to conduct exploratory testing. Which of the following represents the MOST effective test charter for a 60-minute exploratory test session?
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Correct answer: C
An effective test charter is specific and provides a clear mission. It defines the target (fund transfers between own accounts), the actor (user with multiple accounts), and the risks to investigate (inconsistencies, network interruptions). The other options are too generic and do not provide sufficient guidance for a focused and productive exploratory testing session.
- Question 3Advanced
Agile Software Development · FA-1.1.2 Understand the advantages of the whole-team approach
Case Study:
A retail company, 'ShopFast', has adopted Scrum for its new e-commerce platform. The team consists of 5 developers, 2 testers, 1 product owner, and 1 scrum master. In sprint 3, the team worked on a user story to implement a new discount coupon feature.During the sprint review, the product owner applies a 15% discount coupon, and the final price is calculated incorrectly. A developer investigates and finds that the logic for percentage-based calculations was flawed. The team's 'Definition of Done' includes 'Unit tests passed with 85% code coverage' and 'All acceptance criteria manually verified by a tester'. The acceptance criteria for the story did not specify tests for percentage-based discounts, only for fixed-amount discounts.
Based on the whole-team approach to quality, what was the most significant failure that led to this defect escaping to the sprint review?
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Correct answer: C
The core principle of the whole-team approach is shared responsibility for quality, which begins with a shared understanding of the requirements. The root cause of the defect was the gap in the acceptance criteria. This gap indicates a failure in the collaborative process between the PO, developers, and testers to explore the user story fully and define what 'done' means for all scenarios. While developer testing and tester exploration are important, they are guided by the acceptance criteria. The failure to create comprehensive criteria is the primary breakdown in the whole-team approach.
- Question 4Intermediate
Agile Testing Methods, Techniques, and Tools · FA-3.2.2 Estimate testing effort based on iteration content and quality risks
In planning poker, the team is estimating a user story. The estimates revealed are: Product Owner (3), Developer 1 (8), Developer 2 (5), Tester (13). What is the most appropriate next step for the team?
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Correct answer: B
The primary purpose of planning poker is not just to get a number, but to create a shared understanding of the work involved. A wide divergence in estimates, especially between the highest and lowest, indicates a difference in understanding. The next step should always be a discussion, led by those with the outlier estimates, to uncover hidden complexities, risks, or assumptions. The PO's vote is often considered input but not part of the final development team estimate, but their perspective on the low score is valuable. The tester's high estimate likely reveals testing complexities the developers haven't considered.
- Question 5Intermediate
Agile Testing Methods, Techniques, and Tools · FA-3.3.3 Given a user story, write acceptance test-driven development test cases
A team is using Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD). Given the user story 'As a user, I want to be able to reset my password if I forget it', which of the following represents a valid acceptance test in the Gherkin (Given-When-Then) format?
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Correct answer: C
This option correctly uses the Given-When-Then structure to define a clear, unambiguous, and testable scenario. 'Given' sets the precondition, 'When' describes the action or event, and 'Then' specifies the expected outcome. The other options are either simple test descriptions or incomplete Gherkin syntax.
- Question 6Beginner
Agile Software Development · FA-1.1.2 Understand the advantages of the whole-team approach
The 'Power of Three' in an Agile context refers to the collaboration between which three primary roles during user story clarification and refinement?
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Correct answer: C
The 'Power of Three' emphasizes that conversations about requirements (user stories) are most effective when they involve the perspectives of those who will build it (developer), those who will test it (tester), and those who represent the business need (business representative/product owner). This collaborative triad ensures a shared understanding and helps identify ambiguities and risks early.
- Question 7Advanced
Agile Testing Methods, Techniques, and Tools · FA-3.1.2 Recall the concepts of the test pyramid
A tester joins an Agile team that has a large, existing suite of automated UI tests. These tests are brittle, slow, and frequently fail due to minor UI changes, causing the CI/CD pipeline to be unreliable. This situation is often referred to as the 'Ice Cream Cone' anti-pattern. What does the Test Pyramid model suggest as the best long-term solution to this problem?
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Correct answer: B
The Test Pyramid advocates for a large base of fast, reliable unit tests, a smaller layer of integration/API tests, and a very small layer of end-to-end UI tests. The 'Ice Cream Cone' is the inverse and is a known anti-pattern. The correct strategy is not to just fix the brittle tests, but to fundamentally change the testing strategy by pushing logic and functional validation to lower, more stable levels of the application stack (unit and API tests), which provide faster feedback and are less prone to breaking from UI changes.
- Question 8Intermediate
Agile Testing Methods, Techniques, and Tools · FA-3.3.4 For both functional and non-functional behavior, write test cases using black box test design techniques
A tester is working on a user story for a shipping cost calculator. The requirements are: shipping is $5 for orders under $50, and free for orders of $50 or more. Using boundary value analysis, which set of order totals provides the minimum number of values to test the boundaries of this requirement?
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Correct answer: C
Boundary value analysis (BVA) focuses on testing at and around the 'boundaries' where behavior changes. The boundary is $50.00. A three-point BVA would test just below the boundary ($49.99), on the boundary ($50.00), and just above the boundary ($50.01). Adding $0 tests the lower limit of the first partition. This set provides the most efficient and effective coverage for the specified boundary.
- Question 9Beginner
Agile Software Development · FA-1.2.5 Know the differences between iteration and release planning, and how a tester adds value in each of these activities
What is the primary difference between release planning and iteration planning in an Agile project?
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Correct answer: C
The key difference is the time horizon and level of detail. Release planning is strategic, looking at a multi-iteration or multi-month timeline to decide the overall scope of a product release. Iteration (or sprint) planning is tactical, focusing on a short timeframe (e.g., two weeks) to select and plan the work for the immediate next increment of the product.
- Question 10Intermediate
Fundamental Agile Testing Principles, Practices, and Processes · FA-2.2.1 Describe the tools and techniques used to communicate the status of testing in an Agile project
An Agile team is struggling to communicate test progress effectively to stakeholders. The stakeholders find raw pass/fail numbers and defect counts confusing. Which information radiator would be most effective for showing the progress of testing work against the planned user stories for the current iteration?
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Correct answer: C
An Agile task board provides a simple, highly visible, and instantly understandable view of progress. Stakeholders can see at a glance which user stories are being worked on, which are in testing, and which are complete. It directly links testing activities (as tasks) to the business value (user stories), which is much more meaningful to stakeholders than raw technical metrics.
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