Exploratory Testing vs Traditional Testing
Juhi Bansal
Delivering Quality Products With a User-Centric Focus | Exploring the possibilities of creative content creation
I have been working as a software tester following the traditional testing method for the last couple of years, and I feel that it is not the most effective way of testing. I have been a fan of exploratory testing since day 1. Let us explain to our testers what the application is about, and then let them be. Restricting them to test cases and SIT targets kills the thinking process and creativity. It is my personal opinion because I tried this approach myself, and it worked out great for me. I remember a day back in 2015 when I took a day off from my regular activities and logged 28 valid bugs in the application, all because I tested exploratorily. The entire team could not find those many bugs as they were busy completing their test cases.
I have found issues in popular sites like Wikipedia, Instagram, and Gaana, all because I was under no pressure to meet any specific targets and execute use cases devised by a team. Rather, I just browsed the site and created my use cases as an actual user.
All these points are only possible if the project leadership understands and implements the following -
- Be supportive of your testers when they find out issues that are design gaps.
- Do not pressurize the team about strict deadlines or micromanage what every tester does in a day.
- Form a separate team which only focuses on exploratory testing.
- Keep your employees before your clients.
Thoughts?
Global Principal Architect (AI + Data + CRM)
3 年Amazing article Juhi. Great start. But want to share few thoughts hope this helps. Exploratory testing looks good but also think from the angle when lots of invalid defect's gets raised & then time get spent on triaging them & then marking them as invalid. Test cases are there to make sure that there is no gap in system understanding. I have been at both the sides & I know how exciting it sounds that we can do anything with the application. It's a good thing to have but few points we should consider: - 1. We should have the right skill set of the people aligned with the exploratory testing. Aligning junior or newbies on this activity can result lot of capacity loss. 2. Exploratory testing will solidify but some high-level focus areas should be provided up front. So that people don't log defects on the UI only & ignore the core functionality which is more complex scenario & data driven.
Seasoned Program/Project manager | 13+ years of experience |Ex-Gilbarco |Deloitte IAccenture
3 年Well.. I completely agree with this write up. A free mind is way more productive than a slaved mind and micromanagement takes us noware. A team which is trusted by the management becomes a self managed team over the time.
Java | Spring Boot | Microservices | Azure DevOps | AWS Certified Solution Architect | Docker | Kubernetes.
3 年Well, executing those test cases is part of the deliverables. Yes I do agree we should catch defects as much as possible and as early as possible of development lifecycle but also remember delivering a product with 100% defect-free is a myth. You will be finding issues in product/applications which are up and running in real life. The only point I want to make here is :- we need to monitor our work and make sure we are also on track delivering and meeting the timelines which are committed to client.