ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which risk management activity involves estimating the likelihood and impact of identified risks?
- Risk identification
- Risk quantification (Correct answer)
- Risk response planning
- Risk monitoring and control
Correct answer: Risk quantification
Risk quantification assesses each identified risk by estimating its probability of occurrence and the magnitude of its potential impact on the project.
Question 2: A software team discovers a defect during code inspection that would have caused a security vulnerability. According to the Cost of Quality model, this represents which type of cost?
- External failure cost
- Internal failure cost
- Appraisal cost (Correct answer)
- Prevention cost
Correct answer: Appraisal cost
Inspection is an appraisal activity; the cost of conducting the inspection and finding the defect before release is classified as an appraisal cost.
Question 3: What is the key characteristic of a 'use case' in software requirements documentation?
- It describes the internal architecture of a software module
- It captures the functional interactions between an actor and the system to achieve a goal (Correct answer)
- It specifies non-functional performance benchmarks
- It defines the hardware configuration required to run the software
Correct answer: It captures the functional interactions between an actor and the system to achieve a goal
A use case describes how an actor (user or external system) interacts with the software system to accomplish a specific functional goal.
Question 4: Which software process model is most appropriate when requirements are well-understood and unlikely to change significantly?
- Spiral model
- Agile/Scrum model
- Waterfall model (Correct answer)
- Evolutionary prototyping model
Correct answer: Waterfall model
The Waterfall model works best for projects with stable, well-defined requirements since it is sequential and does not easily accommodate late-stage changes.
Question 5: In Fagan inspections, which role is responsible for moderating the inspection meeting and ensuring the process is followed correctly?
- Author
- Reader
- Moderator (Correct answer)
- Inspector
Correct answer: Moderator
The moderator leads the Fagan inspection meeting, ensures procedures are followed, manages the pace, and is responsible for the overall inspection process quality.
Question 6: What does McCabe's cyclomatic complexity metric primarily measure in software?
- The number of external dependencies a module has
- The number of linearly independent paths through a program's source code (Correct answer)
- The ratio of comment lines to executable lines of code
- The average depth of nested conditional statements
Correct answer: The number of linearly independent paths through a program's source code
Cyclomatic complexity (V(G) = E - N + 2P) counts the number of independent execution paths, which correlates with testing effort and defect potential.
Question 7: Which of the following is a key principle of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3?
- Processes are undefined and ad hoc; success depends on individual heroics
- Processes are managed quantitatively using statistical methods
- Processes are characterized and understood at the organizational level (Correct answer)
- Processes are optimized through continuous improvement based on business goals
Correct answer: Processes are characterized and understood at the organizational level
CMMI Level 3 (Defined) requires that processes be characterized, understood, and proactively managed at the organizational level using standard processes.
ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer 3
Which risk management activity involves estimating the likelihood and impact of identified risks?