We build our code into relatively-simple things which work in a complex environment. The systems that result – mixing code, configuration, data, events, and other software / hardware / people systems – can surprise us.
We can choose to search for those surprises before they bite.
I've been thinking and writing about exploratory testing for years; I reckon that it's a core and necessary testing practice which doesn't yet have a firm basis in collaborative software engineering, and is often neglected in strategy and management.
This page was written as a temporary holder for some of the things I've written - it's become a resource for some people, so I'm leaving it here as a page for now. I intend to revisit all these dashed-off articles. I'll replace this page with a collection of more-recent articles as I reflect on recent work.
For more-polished thought-on-paper, I recommend that you check out Elisabeth Hendrickson's fine Explore It!, and Maaret Pyhäjärvi's Contemporary Exploratory Testing.
Management
- Adventures in Session-based Testing.
- ET Notes - Why Exploration has a place in any Strategy
- ET Notes - Scripting and Exploring
Techniques and support
- A Positive View of Negative Testing.
- ET Notes - The Importance of being Judgemental
- ET Notes - What to Record
- ET Notes - Software testing diagram 1 and variants
I don't intend this page to be a collection of ET resources – others do that better. For instance, here's something from Ministry of Testing.