Tuesday 1 September 2009 - From Play Time to Exploratory Testing |
| So I started a Exploratory Testing group on Linkedin. In one of the discussions (it seemed like) somebody was calling Exploratory Testing 'Play Time' and so following on from the 'Why is there a exploratory vs scripted, manual vs automated mindset?' discussion I'm curious to know at what point do you stop randomly clicking and put some thought into it? We briefly discussed this on Friday night at the London Tester Gathering, or rather I said, 'James (Lyndsay)! Nick (White) is calling ET play time' and then stood back and listened to people talk. Basically it was stated that ET and randomly clicking (play time) will pick up a lot of bugs, this we know. There is a difference though, randomly clicking and finding a bug usually comes with somebody saying 'I have no idea what I was doing but I got this error'. ET will give you a much more information and will point you in the right direction to *******te the error. So at what point do you stop and think 'maybe we should stop being random and focus in a little bit'? |
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Thursday 10 September 2009 - When I focus |
| Posted by Testy Redhead |
| To me playtime is also of value, but that's when you just go bug hunting on instinct. Not randomly clicking, but when I regress my bug fixes I do at least some playtime where I know the area around the fix and I do this "haze of intuition" thing for about 10 minutes. The focus kicks in as soon as I find anything interesting, and then the exploratory aspect begins. This is sort of the "playtime into exploratory" transition that I find effective when I'm closing out my bugs from fixed, or bouncing them back/filing new ones based on changes. I think the person also might just be from a Western Culture where we assume anything fun must be bad and sinful. Apparently the Puritans wouldn't approve of ET? :) |
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A place for me to write about testing and tested related things. Occasionally general items will sneak in but that's life.
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