Exploratory Testing Notes

The notes from   Link_1

Concurrent Test Design and Execution

The plainest definition of exploratory testing is test design and test execution at the same time. This is the opposite of scripted testing (predefined test procedures, whether manual or automated).

Exploratory tests, unlike scripted tests, are not defined in advance and carried out precisely according to plan.

How to balance exploratory testing with scripted testing

To the extent that the next test we do is influenced by the result of the last test we did, we are doing exploratory testing.

We become more exploratory when we can't tell what tests should be run, in advance of the test cycle, or when we haven't yet had the opportunity to create those tests. If we are running scripted tests, and new information comes to light that suggests a better strategy, we may switch to an exploratory mode(as in the case of discovering a new failure that requires investigation).

Conversely.

We take a more scripted approach when there is little uncertainly about how we want to test, new tests are relatively unimportant, the need for efficiency and reliability in executing those tests is worth the effort of scripting, and when we are prepared to pay the cost of documenting and maintaining tests.

The results of exploratory testing aren't necessarily radically different than those of scripted testing, and the two approaches to testing are fully compatible.

Why we do exploratory testing

Recurring themes in the management of an effective exploratory test cycle are tester, test strategy, test reporting and test mission. The scripted approach to testing attempts to mechanize the test process by taking test ideas out of a test designer's head and putting them on paper. There's a lot of value in that way of testing. But exploratory testers take the view that writing down test scripts and following them tends to disrupt the intellectual processes that make testers able to find important problems quickly. The more we can make testing intellectually rich and fluid, the more likely we will hit upon the right tests at the right time.

That's where the power of exploratory testing comes in: the richness of this process is only limited by the breadth and depth of our imagination and our emerging insights into the nature of the product under test.

Scripting has its place. I can imagine testing situations where efficiency and repeatability are so important that we should script or automate them.