About Software Testing

Say that you have been assigned to work on a project. What are some of the questions you can ask to get you up to speed with the project?

First ask questions about the background of the project:
Is this a one phase or multiple phase project?
If multiple, what are the phases that have been implemented before?
Get some insight about previous implementations - groups involved in requirements gathering, QA, who was the lead on the project, any info that may help you understand the current phase.

In particular, what is the current phase about? What is the functionality to be implemented? At a high-level.

Then who's doing the development and what is your contact from dev.
In what stage is the development - currently coding or unit testing?

What are you supposed to test? Are there any other testers in your team who will be responsible for testing other functionality?
Get to know everybody in your team and try to figure out what are the roles and responsibilities. A good source for that would be the project manager or team lead or even the Project Plan.

Where are you going to log the defects if you find any? Does a defect log template exist? Is there a test management tool that the company uses?

If you have questions about requirements, whom can you direct them? Who would be your contact from the business side for the functionality you're testing?

These questions should give you a pretty good idea about the project and what you are supposed to do.

If your team lead does not book a meeting with you to discuss all this, then take a step forward and book the meeting. These questions will help you start the project on the right foot.