Describe your approach to estimate the time that it will take to test a functional area.

The simplest answer is: IT DEPENDS! What does it depend on - explaining the approach 1. Look business rules and end-to-end business cases 9prepare them if they do not exist) 2. # QA resources available 3. Experience of the available QA resources 4. Various tools availability - defect tracking tools, test case management tools, automation tools, etc 5. Quality gates policy 6. Types of testings to be performed - functional, load, performance etc 7. Are tools available to conduct load/performance testing? Based on the above factors you chart out the best approach to achieve optimal quality standards within the allocated budget and time. Budget and time go hand in hand. When someone asks you to describe the approach to estimate time/budget, they are actually looking for the dependencies. Also, to understand if a QA can function without much supervision.