Note: – This question will normally be asked to judge whether you have traditional or the modern way of testing attitude.
In traditional testing methodology (sad to say many companies still have that attitude) testing is always done after the build and execution. But that’s a wrong thinking. Because earlier we catch a defect, the more cost effective it is. For instance fixing a defect in maintenance is 10 times costly than fixing the same during execution.
Traditional way of testing
Testing after code and build is a traditional approach and many companies have improved on the same. Testing should occur in conjunction with each phase as shown in the below figure.
Modern way of testing
In requirement phase we can verify are the requirements according to the customer needs. During design we can check whether the design document covers the entire requirement. In this stage we can also generate rough functional data. We can also review the design document from the architecture and the correctness perspective. In build and execution phase we can execute unit test cases and generate structural and functional data. And finally comes the testing phase as it was in the traditional way i.e. run the system test cases and see of the system work according to the standards. During installation we need to check if the system is compatible for the software. Finally during maintenance phase when any fixes are made we can check retest the fixes and follow the regression testing.