- Make real-time decisions for better application testing
- Design your tests as you perform them
- Organize exploratory testing for you and your team
- Practice a session-based framework for exploratory testing
- Implement test charters to guide your testing
- Examine examples and real-world case studies
Many traditional test teams are augmenting their documented test plans and test cases with a structured, exploratory approach. Other teams adopting agile methods are replacing ad-hoc testing with exploratory techniques, allowing all development team members to effectively participate in product testing. Whether your organization is moving toward agile software practices or using a more traditional approach, exploratory testing can help you find important defects sooner.
Exploratory testing is all about simultaneously learning about the software you are testing while you are designing and executing the tests. It is used by developers for unit testing, independent testing teams for integration or system testing, and by customers implementing acceptance testing of developed or commercial off-the-shelf software packages.
In this highly interactive class, students learn about and practice session-based exploratory testing, a framework to organize testing into a series of time boxed missions or “charters.” In fulfilling a test charter, you use your skills and experience to adapt your testing actions as you learn what the application does. Through this process, one discovery leads to another and another as you explore the software under test. Exploratory testers add permanent value to projects by constructing practical notes, which provide short valuable logs that record what was discovered during each testing session.
Through a series of small group, hands-on exercises, students practice exploratory testing and improve their skills as they test. In addition, you will learn how and when to use exploratory testing practices in different project and organizational contexts. Review the tools that are available to organize and support exploratory testing, and capture data from exploratory testing sessions. Return to your team with new skills and processes to make your testing more effective—and more fun.
Who Should Attend
This course is appropriate for anyone who works in fast-paced testing environments, including test engineers, test managers, agile developers, QA engineers, and all software managers. Customers charged with acceptance testing and traditional unit testers will also benefit from the course.