User Experience (UX) refers to the overall emotions and satisfaction a user derives from using a product or system. It encompasses a broad range of factors including efficiency, effectiveness, accessibility, and emotional responses. It goes beyond mere functionality and looks at the holistic feel and usability.

While both exploratory and ad hoc testing can seem similar due to their non-scripted nature, exploratory testing differentiates itself as it's based on the tester's knowledge, skills, and experience. Ad hoc lacks the structured approach present in exploratory testing.

The "Pesticide Paradox" principle explains that if the same tests are repeatedly conducted, they will no longer find new bugs. It's important to update and revise tests regularly to catch new defects. If the same bugs appear repeatedly, the tests might not be evolving with the application's changes.

Feedback from Beta Testing is invaluable as it comes directly from actual users. While it doesn't usually result in major architectural changes at this stage, it does often lead to refinements, bug fixes, and enhancements that improve the software's quality and usability, ensuring a more polished final product for the end-users.

Alpha testing typically involves internal teams (often developers or QA teams) testing the app, and it takes place before the beta version is released. In contrast, beta testing involves a select group of external users who test the nearly finished product. It helps gather feedback from real users before the final version is released to the public.

Branching within Configuration Management is especially beneficial when multiple teams or individuals are working on the same codebase. This allows each team or developer to work on a separate "branch" or copy of the codebase, ensuring that they don't interfere with each other's work. Once the work on a branch is complete, it can be merged back into the main codebase after thorough testing, ensuring a smooth integration of different features or fixes.

To ensure improved traceability in CI/CD pipelines, it's crucial to link each code commit to a specific "Issue or Ticket". This provides context about why a particular change was made, aids in debugging, and ensures transparency and accountability in the process.

Non-incremental integration testing, commonly referred to as the Big Bang approach, involves integrating all modules suddenly at once and then testing the entire system. This approach is risky because if any defects arise, it becomes difficult to identify the root cause since everything is integrated all at once.

Acceptance Testing is the phase of software testing where the system is tested for acceptability. Its main purpose is to evaluate the system's compliance with the business requirements and assess whether it is acceptable for delivery to the end users.

Load testing and stress testing are both forms of performance testing, but they serve different purposes. Load testing primarily focuses on how the system behaves under expected or heavy loads, determining its scalability. In contrast, stress testing intentionally pushes the system beyond its designed capacity to identify its breaking points and to see how it recovers from failures.