How to plan your tests when there is (almost) no information about the product?

1. Exploratory testing (ET) in a
chaotic world
By Doron Bar
Verint - Common Technology
Center
qapro.org
2017.06.18

2. ET – why?
• Demonstrate your skills
• Express your creativity
• Satisfy our curiosity
• Discover new bugs
• Reduce testing time
Earn credit!

3. ET – what is it anyway?
• The key to succeed is the cognitive engagement of the tester.
Learning
Test
design
Test
execution

4. Planning: ET Vs. Scripted (1/2)
• The requirements analysis is the same as scripted.
• The test design techniques are the same: Boundaries, flows,
business logic etc.
• Both techniques purposes are:
• Find new bugs in the product.
• Give accurate quality status.
• Validate the product.

5. Planning: ET Vs. Scripted (2/2)
• “The difference is that while we might make notes about the tests
we're designing, we aren't writing down formal test cases”
(Elisabeth Hendrickson).
• Charters, like:
Explore input fields
with javascript and sql injection attacks
to discover security vulnerabilities.

6. The story

7. Please test this feature / program
 Requirements? UX?
 STD?
 Technical Design?
 Explanation?

8. Extinct by instinct

9. Analysis paralysis

10. Planning and executing

11. Talking

12. What to ask?
• What was the purpose of the feature? What did it coms to solve?
• What is the value for the user?
• How does it work? How is the user using it?
• Functionality.
• Modeling.
• Tech info: compatibility, configuration (user, admin), logs.
• Security (SSL, XSS, FW).
• Interoperability.
• Performance.

13. Where to inquire?
• Help – know the functionality

14. Recon ET

15. Where to inquire?
• Help, manuals – know the functionality
• Advertising material (Brochures, white paper, YouTube) – know
the value to the user
• Bugs – know what is important, where were the vulnerabilities
• Support systems – know how it was used
• Forums – what people think about it.
• Google – about competitions, standards, technology etc.

16. The tests design

17. The Execution

18. ET types: by documents

19. ET techniques
Issue
Topics in the MindMap
Scenario based (Soap
Opera)
Emulate user tasks
Bug based testing
Test
create a charter per issue
these are tests where one assumes that the
user has everything going on.
do whatever users do to accomplish whatever
it is the users try to accomplish.
execute tests based on bug types found in the
feature/application.

20. ET tours
Issue
The FedEx Tour
The Garbage Collector’s
Tour
The Money Tour
Test
think of data moving through the software.
we go screen by screen, dialog by dialog and
not stopping to test in detail.
run through the demos yourself and look for
problem.

21. ET tours
Issue
The Intellectual Tour
The Obsessive-
Compulsive Tour
Test
asking the software hard questions: How to
make the software work as hard as possible?
Which features will stretch it to its limits?
Inputs and data will cause it to perform the
most processing? Which inputs might fool its
error-checking routines?
they will perform the same action over and
over. They will repeat, redo, copy, paste,
borrow, and then do all that some more.

22. Heuristic
Issue
Things you can count
Relative position
Files and storage
Heuristic
zero, one, many
beginning, middle, end
change the locations

23. Heuristic
Issue
Nouns & Verbs
Personas
Heuristic
nouns: message, header, draft, attachment,
signature, folder, recipient
verb: send, receive, edit, save, export, move,
archive
young fellow, not so young fellow, techie,
impatient

25. Because testing is an art

26. ET without requirements: the sources
• RAPID REPORTER
• Testing Without a Map
• ET Tours: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/jj620911(v=vs.120).aspx
• Books:
• Explore It
• Exploratory Software Testing
• My blog: https://www.qapro.org/
• Forum: https://www.facebook.com/groups/IL.Testing.QA/