Limiting Testing With A Timebox

placeholder – needs to be re-written, expanded with my usual stuff and properly integrated.

Timeboxes help you limit and focus your exploratory work. They tend to be talked about by testers as an integral part of Session-Based Testing.

Timeboxing

When entering a session, the tester chooses their approach to match the time; a 10-minute session would have different activities from a 60-minute session. If you're allowing interesting things to expand your time, acknowledge that, and feel interested in the opportunity to chose something more interesting. If you're bored, and still breaking your timebox, you're not timeboxing.

Awareness of time is important: you may follow your charter, yet want to pause after a while and think about alternatives. You might want to take time at the end to wrap up your notes. If you're a tester who