Making the Most of Exploratory Testing

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

This chapter introduces exploratory testing: manually trying out a new feature to get rapid feedback on its behavior. We’ll describe exploratory testing in detail, consider its strengths and weaknesses, and when you should perform it in a project.

We’ll look at the prerequisites you need to begin exploratory testing and the approaches you should take. This testing can be a miniature version of the complete test plan, taking a customer’s point of view, and using your naivety about how the feature works to identify confusing areas.

Exploratory testing should be used as part of a larger test strategy but can be run in isolation when time is short. We’ll finish by looking at what you should check when performing this testing, and the importance of curiosity, both here and throughout the testing process.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• What is exploratory testing?
• Advantages, disadvantages, and alternatives
• Understanding when testing should begin
• Understanding the test activities
• The spiral model of test improvement
• Performing the first test
• Mapping out new features
• Using your naivety while testing
• Running complete exploratory testing
• Using exploratory testing by necessity
• Checking exploratory test results
• Using curiosity in testing