I have had this "open ended" question asked 3 times in my last 3 interviews. Each time I was told there was no right or wrong answer...its more of a "thinking" question as to explore and illustrate your thought process. I was never given feedback, so I'm still curious as to what some additional answers are that I was not able to come up with off the top of my head.

Question: On a whiteboard I was given a blank executable with an 'OK' button and a blank input field. I was asked how many different ways and types could I test this?

Answer: The answers I was able to give were as follows (and I know there are many more...which is why I posted this question):

1) Testing the input field itself. Does it have a character limit? Can it take letters and numbers? Can it take special characters? Is it case sensitive?

2) Leaving the input field blank and hitting the "OK" button to see if any error is generated.

3) Right click inside the executable and seeing what my options are.

4) Installing and uninstalling.

5) If I enter some sort of text or set of characters (i.e. letters or numbers) and click "OK", where does that get written to? What type of file is my input writting to?

Hello SBB527,

According to your description what you have told here, I can say only one thing that either you are fresher or less experienced with these tricky questions.

You know in these types of questions, answers doesn't matter.The things matter is what the interviewer wants to listen.

I want to clarify some questions before answering your post.

1)Have you started answering without asking for requirement?
2)You should ask for "Which type of testing do you want ?"
3)Tell me the features to be tested and not to be tested for this textbox?

If you have questioning in this way, then only after getting any satisfactory answer, then only you should start telling them about tests you will performed, otherwise not.

As test cases required for this question is, so many the answers, I will post later, first I want to give chance to other members.

__________________
Brijesh Jain
brijesh.tester@yahoo.co.in
http://softwaretestingexpertise.blogspot.com

I very much agree with jainbrijesh. while thinking abt the testcases do keep in mind the aspects such as funtionality, usability n UI and performance.