exploratory testing

Conference Presentations

The Many Flavors of Exploratory Testing

The concept of exploratory testing is evolving, and different interpretations and variations are emerging and maturing. These range from the pure and original thoughts of James Bach, later expanded to session-based exploratory testing by Jon Bach, to testing tours described by James Whittaker, to the many different ways test teams across the world have chosen to interpret exploratory testing in their own contexts. Though it appears to be simple, exploratory testing can be difficult to introduce into a traditional organization where testers are familiar only with executing scripted test cases and where the concept of exploration and creative testing may be somewhat foreign. At the same time, organizations need to address the challenges of traceability and reporting, moving from traditional ways to a more exploratory approach.

Gitte Ottosen, Sogeti Denmark
Leverage Your Test Automation ROI with Creative Solutions

Typical automated tests perform repetitive tasks quickly and accurately. However, with some creativity, you can leverage automation to dramatically increase its ROI. Doug Hoffman demonstrates how to employ test automation for testing activities that are impossible with manual testing.

Doug Hoffman, Software Quality Methods, LLC
Exploratory Testing in an Agile World: An Interview with Matt Barcomb

Matt Barcomb works at LeanDog where he is passionate about building collaborative cross-functional teams and finding ways to make the business-software universe a better place to work, play, and do business. Heather Shanholtzer talked to Matt about exploratory testing in an agile project.

Heather Shanholtzer's picture Heather Shanholtzer
The Two Sides of Software Testing: Checking and Exploring

Is testing about checking against system requirements, or is it about exploring the software? In this article, Elisabeth Hendrickson explains a valuable truth often clouded by this debate—good testing takes advantage of both of these approaches.

Elisabeth Hendrickson's picture Elisabeth Hendrickson
James Bach From One Expert to Another: James Bach

In this installment of From One Expert to Another, Jon Bach uses a 20 Questions approach to interview his brother, James Bach, about his reputation, his work as a tester and consultant, his thoughts on the global testing community, and more.

Jon Bach's picture Jon Bach
Testing Lessons Learned from the Great Detectives

What the great detectives have taught me about testing.

Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Chartering the Course: Guiding Exploratory Testing

Charters help you guide and focus exploratory testing. Well-formed charters help testers find defects that matter and provide vital information to stakeholders about the quality and state of the software under test. Rob Sabourin shares his experiences defining different exploratory testing charters for a diverse group of test projects. For example, reconnaissance charters focus on discovering application features, functions, and capabilities; failure mode charters explore what happens to applications when something goes wrong. In addition, you can base charters on what systems do for users, what users do with systems, or simply the requirements, design, or code. Rob reviews key elements of a well-formed testing charter-its mission, purpose, focus, understanding, and scope. Learn how to evolve a test idea into an exploratory charter using examples from systems testing, Scrum story testing, and developer unit testing.

Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Large-scale Exploratory Testing at Microsoft: Let's Take a Tour

Manual testing is the best way to find the bugs most likely to bite users badly after a product ships. However, manual testing remains a very ad hoc, aimless process. At a number of companies across the globe, groups of test innovators gathered in think tank settings to create a better way to do manual testing—a way that is more prescriptive, repeatable, and capable of finding the highest quality bugs. The result is a new methodology for exploratory testing based on the concept of tours through the application under test. In short, tours represent a more purposeful way to plan and execute exploratory tests. James Whittaker describes the tourist metaphor for this novel approach and demonstrates tours taken by test teams from various companies including Microsoft and Google. He presents results from numerous projects where the tours were used in critical-path production environments.

James Whittaker, Google
Continuous Integration and Testing

Lisa Crispin explains in this article how CI has become an absolute necessity for any software development team in this day and age. For those who have yet to fully embrace CI, this article gives you some great reasons you should, along with some helpful resources to get you started.

Lisa Crispin's picture Lisa Crispin
STARWEST 2008: Telling Your Exploratory Story

What do you say when your manager asks, "How did it go today?" As a test manager, you might say, "I'll check to see how many test cases the team executed today." As a tester with a pile of test cases on your desk, you could say, "I ran 40 percent of these tests today," or "At the rate I'm going I'll be finished with these test cases in 40 days." However, if you're using exploration as part of your testing approach, it might be terrifying to try to give a status report--especially if some project stakeholders think exploratory testing is irresponsible and reckless compared to test cases. So how can you retain the power and freedom of exploration and still give a report that earns your team credibility, respect, and perhaps more autonomy? Jon Bach offers ways for you to explain the critical and creative thinking that makes exploratory testing so powerful.

Jon Bach, LexisNexis

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