This session is NOT about test techniques or how to test a

product.

This session is about Exploratory Testing and after you should

know:

1. What is Exploratory Testing?

2. What kind of skills do you need and how do testers develop these skills?

3. Various key concepts of ET

4. Advantages and Disadvantages

5. How to manage an exploratory test team

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 "Exploratory testing involves simultaneously learning, planning,
running tests, and reporting / troubleshooting results."
Dr. Cem Kaner (2001)

"Exploratory testing is an interactive process of concurrent

product exploration, test design and test execution.”
” 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.”
James Bach, Satisfice (2001)

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• Manual testing by professional skilled testers
• Freedom, flexibility and fun for testers
• Controllability, reliability and high quality for managers
• Optimized to find defect
• Continually adjusting plans, re-focusing on the most
promising risk areas
• Following hunches/intuitions based on previous test
validation results
• Minimizing time spent on documentation

Focus on manual
validation – making
testing activities agile
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Exploratory testing seeks to find out how the software actually
works, and to ask questions about how it will handle difficult
and easy cases.

– Design is developed by the answers to the previous

questions
– Parallel design while executing tests
– Testers leverage skills and knowledge to learn about the
system under test, ”thinking-while-testing”

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 Exploratory Tester is first a test
designer. They systematically explore
the product under test.

Method Examples:
• Rule of Thumb
• Educated Guess
• Common Sense

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The quality of the testing is dependent on the tester's skill of
inventing test cases and finding defects. The more the tester
knows about the product and different test methods, the better
the testing will be.

• Intuitive questioning – based on experiences or knowledge

• Idea generation – “Focuses on models to look at AUT in
different ways”
• Systematic thinking approach – guides repeatability and
consistency
• Communication – able to explain strategy and approaches
• Investigational –guides the process based on learned results

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Epistemology is the study of how we know
what we know. The philosophy of science
belongs to Epistemology.

All good testers practice Epistemology.

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All good testers practice Epistemology in their ability to:
• Pose useful questions
• Observe what’s going on
• Describe what they perceive
• Think critically about what they know
• Recognize and manage bias
• Form and test assumptions
• Think strategically
• Analyze and reveal useful information

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• Helps in revealing many unknown and un-detected bugs,
which is very hard to find out through normal testing.

• Helps in improving productivity in terms of covering the

scenarios in scripted testing and those which are not
scripted

• Helps testers in confirming their understanding of the

application and its functionality, hence covering the most
important part of requirements

• Helps testers in learning new methods, test strategies, and

also think out of the box and attain more creativity

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Exploratory testing:
1. Done while a tester explores
2. Performed by walk through the product
3. Interactive test process with defined quality objectives
4. Defined specific tasks, objectives and deliverables

Ad-hoc testing:
1. Informal way of testing
2. Performed once the product is ready
3. Interactive but not defined anywhere
4. No specific tasks, objectives and deliverables

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• A common goal of exploration is to probe for weak
areas of the program.
• Test team’s resource consumption per week:
• 25% of the group’s time developing new tests
• 50% executing old tests (including bug regression)
• 25% on exploratory testing

Cem Kaner (2001a)

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Advantages:
• Less Preparation is needed
• Earlier identification of defects
• Approach intellectually stimulating
• Based on deductive reasoning of previous
results
• Information gained while testing to
design new and better tests

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Disadvantages:
• Tests are not eligible for advanced inspections
• Difficult to show which tests have been
executed
• Freestyle exploratory test ideas, when
revisited, are unlikely to be performed in
exactly the same manner
• Limited documentation to repeat specific
details of the earlier tests.

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 • Delegation
• Participation
Test Process • Pair Testing
• Test Observation

• Test Strategy
Test Coach • Involved in the test

• Test Coverage
Test Reports • Defect Report

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Exploratory testing is interpreted in many
ways. Don’t let fear, doubt or uncertainty
get in the way of the possibilities to expand
your testing.

Practice exploratory testing and if your

testing is adding value to your team’s
effort, you are doing it RIGHT!

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• Beck, K., Test-Driven Development by Example, Addison-Wesley, 2003.
• Crispin, L., T. House, Testing Extreme Programming, Addison-Wesley,
2003.
• Kaner, C., J. Bach, B. Pettichord, Lessons Learned in Software Testing,
John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
• Cem Kaner, A Tutorial in Exploratory Testing,
• Kaner, Falk, and Nguyen, Testing Computer Software (Second Edition),
Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1993. p. 6, 7-11.
• Cem Kaner, James Bach, Exploratory & Risk Based Testing, 2004

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