CTFL-AcT Exam Dumps - iSQI ISTQB Foundation Level Questions and Answers

Acceptance criteria define the conditions under which a user story or requirement is considered complete and acceptable to stakeholders. They clarify the expected behavior, outcomes, or attributes of the system.

Option C is correct because it accurately reflects that acceptance criteria are used to specify what is expected from the system in relation to a given requirement or user story. This ensures a shared understanding among developers, testers, and business stakeholders.

Other options:

A is vague and misleading — acceptance criteria relate directly to specific stories or features, not generally to high-level goals.

B is partially correct but limited — while acceptance criteria help define test conditions, their purpose is broader than just test specification.

D is incorrect — acceptance criteria are not related to code coverage, which is a technical test metric.

Answer: C. For each requirement or user story, the acceptance criteria refine and specify what is expected

UX context analysis evaluates the environment and conditions in which users interact with a product. This includes:

External conditions: lighting, noise, device constraints

Psychological conditions: cognitive load, stress, motivation

These factors influence usability, accessibility, and overall experience.

Option A is correct as it reflects the essence of UX context analysis — understanding the broader user environment to inform design and testing.

Other options:

B describes personas, which are user archetypes used for behavior modeling — more aligned with user profiling.

C focuses on competitor analysis — useful for inspiration, not context analysis.

D involves use cases and workflows — useful for behavior modeling, but not specifically context analysis.

Answer: A. External conditions and psychological conditions are analyzed to derive design decisions

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Poorly defined requirements are a leading cause of defects and project failure. According to the ISTQB CTFL Acceptance Testing Syllabus and IQBBA FL Syllabus, the quality of requirements plays a critical role in successful solution development and acceptance testing. Requirements must be clear, unambiguous, complete, and testable. When they are vague or ambiguous, stakeholders may interpret them differently, which can lead to incorrect implementations, inadequate testing, and ultimately rework or rejection during acceptance.

Option A is explicitly supported by the ISTQB Foundation Syllabus and IQBBA principles. In contrast:

Option B is incorrect because Agile lifecycles still place great emphasis on requirement engineering, even though requirements evolve iteratively.

Option C misrepresents INVEST: it is a guideline for writing good user stories but does not replace reviews or validation techniques.

Option D is risky and not endorsed by ISTQB. While testers may identify ambiguities, the correct approach is to clarify them with all relevant stakeholders, not make assumptions.

Exact Reference – ISTQB CTFL Acceptance Testing Syllabus (Section 1.3.1):

“Ambiguous, incomplete, or inconsistent requirements increase the risk of misunderstanding between stakeholders, leading to incorrect implementation and ineffective tests.”

Equivalence Partitioning (EP) is a black-box test design technique that divides input data into valid and invalid partitions, where each partition is expected to exhibit similar behavior. In the context of acceptance testing, EP is especially effective because it helps validate whether a system behaves correctly for representative input ranges defined in the acceptance criteria.

Acceptance testing aims to confirm that the system meets business requirements and handles inputs as expected. EP allows the tester to cover a large input space using fewer test cases while maintaining a high level of effectiveness. It supports efficiency, broad coverage, and relevance to user expectations.

Other options are less suitable:

A. Static code analysis is a white-box technique, more relevant to unit or integration testing.

B. Input validation is an objective or activity, not a test design technique.

D. Defect-based testing is more diagnostic, used after failures or during exploratory testing — less structured for planned acceptance testing.

Exact Reference – ISTQB CTFL Acceptance Testing Syllabus (Section 2.4):

“Black-box techniques such as equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis are suitable for deriving acceptance tests from user stories or business rules.”

Acceptance criteria describe the conditions under which a requirement or user story is considered fulfilled. These criteria serve as the basis for deriving acceptance test cases. To transform them into concrete tests, testers apply test design techniques such as:

Business process-based testing (deriving tests from modeled workflows)

Use case testing (based on user interactions with the system)

Option B is correct because it clearly describes how structured techniques are applied to translate acceptance criteria into actionable test cases, ensuring traceability and relevance.

Other options:

A is incorrect — experience-based techniques may supplement, but structured methods are foundational in deriving test cases from defined criteria.

C is misleading — risk-based testing is a well-established and effective practice for prioritizing test efforts, including acceptance testing.

D is incorrect — both functional and non-functional criteria are important; there’s no fixed rule to prioritize one over the other.

Answer: B. Test techniques such as business process-based testing or use case testing can be used to create acceptance tests from the acceptance criteria

An exploratory test charter is a high-level plan or mission statement for a time-boxed exploratory testing session. It guides what the tester should focus on during the session and may include the goal of the test, specific areas of the system under test, the risk or feature to explore, the type of persona to simulate (e.g., novice or expert user), and possibly known issues to watch out for.

Option A is correct because specifying a user persona (such as a novice user) helps the tester approach the system from that perspective. This supports the goal of exploratory testing: to simulate realistic usage and uncover issues that scripted tests might miss.

Option B is incorrect — although exploratory testing is adaptive, the charter is defined before the session starts, not elaborated during execution.

Option C is misleading — charters may refer to areas of interest, but not necessarily to a predefined list of activities.

Option D is incorrect — a test oracle (i.e., the mechanism for determining whether a result is correct) is not defined by the charter. It may exist already or be inferred from requirements, heuristics, or user expectations.

Exact Reference – ISTQB CTFL Acceptance Testing Syllabus (Section 3.1):

“Charters define the focus of exploratory testing sessions and may specify the tester’s role or perspective (e.g., novice user).”

In Gherkin syntax (Given-When-Then), the purpose is to describe system behavior in a way that’s understandable to all stakeholders. Test steps should focus on user intentions and observable results — not UI implementation details — to ensure maintainability and abstraction.

Line 3 ("click 'Buy Tickets' button") refers explicitly to a UI element, which should generally be avoided in acceptance tests. Instead, it could say "I request to buy tickets."

Line 7 ("I should provide my personal data") is describing an action the user must take, not an outcome or result. In a Gherkin “Then” step, we expect an observable system response, not further user interaction.

Option C identifies both of these review concerns correctly.

Other options:

A includes an incorrect comment about line 4 ("quantity should not be set") — setting a value is acceptable.

B is false — the test case has reviewable issues.

D might be valid in a different context (e.g., boundary tests), but that’s not a flaw in the existing scenario.

Answer: C. Line 3 refers to an element of the user interface, which is to be avoided and line 7 is an action and not a result

Decision Model and Notation (DMN) is a standardized approach used to model decision logic, often represented in decision tables that evaluate inputs and determine outputs. In this scenario, the entitlements granted to a candidate are based on the total score from two exams, where:

Each exam can be graded as either 0 or 1.

The combined score can be 0, 1, or 2.

The entitlements depend on the combined result:

0 → No entitlements

1 → Partial entitlements

2 → Full entitlements

Among the given diagrams:

Option A simply lists test cases but lacks explicit logic modeling.

Option B shows a mapping from total score to entitlements but doesn't model how the total is derived from the two exams.

Option C redundantly splits outputs into multiple Boolean fields and doesn't reflect how the decision is made from exam inputs.

Option D is the correct representation.

Option D uses:

e1 and e2 as inputs for Exam #1 and Exam #2.

Result as the sum of e1 + e2.

A final Output mapped based on the Result:

0 → No

1 → Partial

2 → Full

This structure accurately follows the DMN standard by expressing inputs, a derived result, and the corresponding decision output, making Option D the correct and most complete decision model.

Exact Reference – ISTQB CTFL Acceptance Testing Syllabus (Section 2.3):

“Decision tables are commonly used to express business rules that determine outputs based on combinations of inputs. DMN formalizes this structure to support automated reasoning.”

Ensuring traceability between requirements (user stories) and test cases is a cornerstone of quality assurance in acceptance testing. It confirms that all business needs are covered by corresponding tests and helps assess the impact of changes. Traceability matrices or tools are used to track these links throughout the lifecycle.

Option B is correct because regularly verifying and updating traceability ensures that acceptance test coverage remains aligned with evolving requirements — a best practice in quality assurance.

Other options:

A (review of source code) is a white-box technique, more suitable for unit or integration testing.

C (checklist-based verification of requirements) is useful but focuses on requirement quality, not directly on testing activities.

D (eye tracking) is a usability evaluation technique and not standard for verifying test case feasibility.

Answer: B. Verification of the traceability between user stories and test cases to make sure it is up to date.

Security testing ensures the system protects data and maintains intended behavior under potential attacks. Different techniques address specific security goals.

Option A is correct: Static vulnerability analysis inspects code or architecture without executing it, identifying weaknesses in mechanisms such as authentication (e.g., login controls) and authorization (e.g., access permissions). These mechanisms are foundational security requirements.

Other options:

B is misleading — penetration testing simulates attacks, but input validation is more often verified with fuzzing or code review.

C is incorrect — fuzzing tests input handling, not the performance of cryptographic algorithms.

D is incorrect — threat modeling is a design-time activity to identify risks; it’s not used to test policies directly.

Answer: A. Static vulnerability analysis to test authentication and authorization mechanisms