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Tag Archives: Exploratory Testing

Is this as good as it gets?

Last month I was travelling throughout Europe. A few days in Switzerland to speak at Swiss Testing Days and visit our communication server team in Zurich. About a week and a half in Denmark teaching at our offices there, a few days in Dublin teaching, and finally a full day meeting with one of our [...]

Evaluating Exploratory Testing

This month’s issue of Testing Experience published my article that summarizes the findings of several case studies of exploratory testing both inside and outside of Microsoft. Although some people consider me to be a harsh critic of exploratory testing nothing could be further from the truth. When I started my career as a professional tester [...]

Exploratory Testing Inside The Box

Originally Published Friday, March 20, 2009
Much of the information about exploratory testing focuses on testing from an end-user perspective. Pundits of exploratory testing claim the approach is also useful from a white box test design approach, but I have yet to see any practical discussion or examples. But, professional testers use exploratory testing approaches all [...]

Exploratory Testing vs. Scripted Testing; Is It Really Only Either Or?

Originally Published Sunday, December 09, 2007
I just left Stockholm after spending a week there. That was my second visit to Stockholm and it is truly a remarkable city. I spoke at EuroStar which is the largest software testing conference in Europe, and had the opportunity to meet some old friends and colleagues as well as [...]

Exploratory Testing versus Ad Hoc Testing

Originally Published Friday, October 19, 2007
A few weeks ago a read an interesting post on SQA Forums about exploratory testing. It was interesting not because there was anything ‘new’ to learn about ‘exploratory’ testing; but because it offered a compelling counter-argument to ad hoc testing. It is also a good read because it differentiates exploratory [...]

Exploratory Testing Examined

Originally Published Sunday, September 03, 2006
Exploratory testing is a topic often embroiled in unreasonable controversy. I didn’t always understand what all of the hullabaloo is about because the simple fact is that all testers engage in exploratory testing, and have used it in software testing for decades (although the early pioneers of software testing [...]

Exploratory Testing and Philosophical Psycho-babble

Originally posted June 01, 2006
Last year James Bach wrote that he “…”invented” testing…mainly by discovering that the problems of testing have already been solved in the fields of cognitive psychology, epistemology, and general systems thinking.” Well, there are simply 2 things wrong with the 2 points James makes in his statement. First, I am pretty [...]