Deliberated Exploration - A Walk in the Woods

There is a view of exploratory testing that believes it is spontaneous (as in combustion) - one just turns up at a keyboard (or other lab/test equipment) and you "just do it"!

Nice, if you can get it.

But what if your system under test is not trivial - in terms of data set-up, configuration, simulated subsystems, user profiles, behaviour or network elements? Does this mean that you can't have an exploratory approach?

Well, of course you can.

Think of it as going on a walk/hike/trek in an area you haven't covered before. To actually get to the "start" of the hike you might use a series of public or scheduled transport (a pre-determined schedule) to get to the start point.

I emphasize the uncertainty around the "start" as you might move this depending on how you defined where the trip should start.

You might decide to start your walk when stepping off of the bus - the bus is a pre-determined script to get you to a point where you will start - but perhaps you notice something odd on the journey; maybe the bus takes a route that isn't signposted as your destination - is it a pre-determined route or a diversion, will the journey take longer ... The questions start.

Using a script to get to your starting point doesn't mean that you can't ask questions - remember, this is testing with your eyes wide open as opposed to eyes wide shut. You finally get to your start point - where the trek can begin.

Just like an exploratory approach - there might be a whole series of set-up and configuration to get the system into a state ready to start working with your test ideas. It might be that you need to construct a simulation of a network element to start testing in the desired area. All of this may take some time to achieve - a whole series of hoops and hurdles.

In some of the systems that I work with this is exactly what we do - it's about a certain design (simulation, config and test ideas) - getting to the starting point where we can start working with our test ideas.

Sometimes the test ideas yield more investigative tracks than others - but that is exactly where we "intend" the exploration/testing to start. But like any (good) tester we notice things on the way, we raise questions about our simulation assumptions, about the problem/test space in our target area - and we learn about the product (along the way and in our target areas) - we learn about our test ideas, we learn about our test ideas, if we're missing something vital in our simulation data, configuration or how the whole might relate to a real end-user.

That was our walk in the woods, and the scripted element is very much a part of the trek/exploration. The scripted part is setting the conditions for the exploration - an enabler - whether I am questioning the set-up as we go is a matter of preference, time, priorities and feedback from previous testing.

Do you observe or get curious on the way to your walk in the woods?

Carnival of Testers #15

A lot of conferences this month - a real feast - almost an Octoberfest. Or was it a case of watching repeats on TV?

If you're a festival fan, a watcher of repeat TV or on the look-out for something new there was something to be had this month.

Repeat Questions?

• Pradeep Soundararajan wrote a piece about labels in testing, specifically the domain label. Read the post and the comments, here.
• A question about measuring tester efficiency prompted Shmuel Gershon to not follow the numbers game and show just how difficult that is to answer.
• Dave Whalen his view on the QA vs QC in testing topic, here.
• Testers who code or not was a topic of a James Christie post and he even managed to get a football reference in!

Agile Testing Days

• Markus Gärtner was doing some sort of blogging marathon producing reports from many of the talks he visited: Lisa Crispin's talk on agile defect management, Janet Gregory's talk on learning for testers and Rob Lambert's talk on structures killing creativity.
• Zeger Van Hese made some write-ups, this post on the day 3 talks could make you wish you'd been there.
• Rob Lambert was giving his alternative angle on conference with a series of video snippets, here, here and here. And to show he hadn't forgotten to blog he also did a write-up, here.

STARWest

• Jon Bach wrote a piece about an impromptu flash mob exploration session out in the corridor. Ideas for a new class or lightning talk?

STPCon

• A fun presentation of some aspects of combinatorial testing was presented by Justin Hunter.
• A sense of variety at STPCon was had from reading Matt Heusser's roundup, here.

SWET
The first Swedish Workshop on Exploratory Testing was held this month. It generated a certain amount of buzz and energy, with several people setting down their thoughts:

• A view from Simon Morley, here; from James Bach, here; a semi-transcription from Rikard Edgren, Henrik Emilsson and Martin Jansson; Ann Flismark's view, here; Christin Wiedemann's view, here; Oscar Cosmo's reflections (in Swedish), and here (in English).

Challenges
Challenges are popular and this month saw a couple of interesting ones.

• A challenge on deconstruction and contextual inference came from Zeger Van Hese. 
• This prompted Thomas Ponnet to walk through his answer and thinking.
• Darren McMillan wrote about an impossible(?) challenge, here.

Miscellany

• A review of Naomi Karten's book on presentation skills was the subject of a Lisa Crispin post. I'm tempted to purchase...
• A good reminder on the importance of interpretation was given by Zeger Van Hese, here.
• If you're wondering about how to think about test estimation in your project, you'll be set on the road to clearer thinking by reading Michael Bolton's post on test estimation in projects, here. It's the fifth installment of a group of worthy reading.
• An angle on pro-active (or is it pre-emptive?) testing was given by Darren McMillan.
• An intriguing idea of Test Proposals was presented by Martin Jansson, here.
• It's been fascinating reading about James Bach's journey across Europe - this one from a stop in Romania. I just can't get the theme tune for Rawhide outta my head now...

Until the next time...