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You are currently viewing What is Exploratory Testing?

Ensure that Exploratory testing is part of your testing suite. Most manual testing should be spent on Usability and Exploratory Testing. These types of tests are non-scripted and thus cannot be automated. These tests need human interaction, observation, analysis, and intuition.

With usability testing, a human needs to verify that the design, layout, and user interface of a business or user feature is intuitive, easy to understand, easy to learn, easy to execute, and attractive to users.

The same goes for exploratory testing.  It’s non-scripted and requires a human doing manual testing, following through on a mission to achieve some business objective.

Here are the basics of Exploratory Testing:

Mission Based

Exploratory testing is mission based. It is not about following a sequence of steps and validating the results. Instead, testers have a mission to complete or a goal/outcome to achieve. For example, if we are testing a student registration system, a mission might be: Register for the fall semester.

Not Scripted

Exploratory testing is not scripted. Testers do not create test plans with test scenarios, test cases, and expected results ahead of time. It is also not ad-hoc testing since it is mission-based. It is a sophisticated, thoughtful approach to testing without a script that uses heuristics and techniques in a very disciplined way.

Session Based

Exploratory testing is timeboxed. Each session has a maximum time limit within which testers must try to accomplish the mission. At the end of the timebox, testing ends no matter the outcome. Testers share their findings in the debrief.

Supplemental

Exploratory testing is not exhaustive testing, but supplemental user story testing to the typical exhaustive functional testing using unit, integration, and system tests. Exploratory testing goes beyond the obvious variations that have already been tested.

Combines Design, Test, and Validation

As testers try to accomplish a mission, they document the steps they took and the results they observed. With this approach, testers design, execute, and validate the test results all at once.

Encourage Exploration

Even though testers have a mission to complete, they are encouraged to deviate or abandon the mission and explore the application the minute they notice something that doesn’t look quite right. At the end of the timeboxed session, testers debrief and share their findings, including what happened, whether the mission was achieved, problems that they found, areas of concern, and suggestions for additional testing or new missions.

Also check out the entire Agile Testing series: