subject: Exploratory Testing: A Trained Brain - Switched On [print this page] How does it feel when you know your destiny, but you don't know how to get there? The logical thing you would do is explore around and try to find out a way. The more you explore the more closer you get to your destination. Similarly, while dealing with the software quality, a tester will come across many phases of QA testing, one of which is Exploratory Testing (ET). ET is a type of testing in which a tester understands the software with the intent of finding errors, not necessarily following formal tests that need to be run. It is a process of simultaneous learning, designing tests on the fly and executing them. In order to make it effective, it is often performed by a competent and thoughtful tester who does not have a thorough understanding of the software.
Exploratory testing is performed when there is a lack of documentation or documents are outdated. Besides such scenarios, ET is also highly recommended to give the tester a break from his/her regular test execution cycle and enable creative hats to be worn in analyzing the product under test. In my association with QA InfoTech for the past 6 years, there have been scenarios where projects were migrated from one company to another or agile methodology with not much documentation was adopted. In these cases, creative ways were required to test the product overcoming the challenges at hand. We have successfully leveraged Exploratory testing in such scenarios. We do not always need expert testers to perform exploratory testing; amateurs can also be involved. At QA InfoTech, we hire domain experts who use their domain knowledge to explore and understand the software. Domain experts and experienced testers make a perfect mix to perform high quality ET for a project. For instance, QA InfoTech hired engineers, who had experience in the aviation industry to help our QA testing team quickly gain momentum and understand the project well. When we have less documentation, at QA InfoTech, we give more stress to ET as this sets up a great platform for testers to move ahead and perform functionality testing, regression, automation, performance, usability, security and ad-hoc testing. Once the testers have explored the application, they start creating exhaustive test cases that cover RBTs (Requirement Based Test Cases) and SBTs (Scenario Based Test Cases). Having an exhaustive set of test cases would ensure that there are no bugs and all the features in the software are tested up to the mark.
Although most of the testers use ET as a part of their day-to-day QA testing activities, it is widely misunderstood. Many a times, ET is confused with ad-hoc testing; ad-hoc testing is performed in final stages of software quality assurance and testing, when testers have complete knowledge of the application; whereas, ET is performed at a very initial stage in the project. ET also encapsulates a part of usability testing, which gives testers an advantage when performing a full-fledged usability testing.
From our experience, we have learnt that ET is useful in understanding the application when documentation does not give you all the details; it empowers you to find your own path to test, which test experts at QA InfoTech think is the best way to learn and understand a software. It also promotes a lot of collaboration between the test team and the rest of the product development team in correctly understanding the products functionality and promotes a healthy communication system overall.
