Tag Archives: Exploratory Testing

Speed Kills

Some of my testers have become embedded on a newly formed agile team. Its been a roller coaster ride for sure. Lots of fun, thrills and a few scary points in time where I thought for certain we were not going to make it, or we were heading in the wrong direction.

From a testing perspective, we were quietly confident. Our testing is exploratory by nature, and so it lends itself easily to being flexible and adaptable.

We’re testing before the acceptance criteria are developed by attending the workshop and asking questions about the upcoming feature, learning why its needed and what problem its trying to solve.

And when it comes to testing the feature, we all jump head first into the deep end, swimming with long powerful strokes through the water of doubt and complexity and only surfacing for air to congratulate and high five each other on another completed testing charter.

Its been a wet wild ride, but not without some uncomfortable moments.

While we’re revelling in the warm waters of upfront information and involvement, we’ve also noticed the cooler waters of reduced timeframes. Shorter iterations has placed a lot of pressure on the testers. There’s a feeling that we’re unable to pause and reflect during our testing, the pressure to be done within the iteration lends to the temptation of minimalist testing.

We had to change something to make sure we were testing well enough.

So, we slowed down.

We made sure we spent time to think critically about our testing, coming up with test ideas, understanding what done meant, and most importantly sharing these ideas with each other (including developers).

Now we test like this:

We still jump into the deep end, splash out, learn some stuff about the product but before we continue with some serious swimming we stop and confer. We reflect on our learning so far, we discuss our ideas and how we know we are done. Only then do we continue with our swimming, our strokes confident and strong.

Its been a revelation for some testers that are new to exploratory testing. They thought the objective was to test as fast as you can without stopping for a breath.

We still have the same time pressure on us, but that stop, that moment of pause and reflection has been sufficient to gain confidence in our approach and confident in delivering the best testing that we can.

Crossing the bridge over no-man’s land

Posted by Anne-Marie Charrett on September 22, 2011 6 comments

Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom has a “moment of indecision” when half way across a bridge he realises he’s been cornered by Mola Ram(the baddy) and his henchmen.

He looks back and there’s a hoard of lusty savages baying for his blood, no luck there. He looks ahead only to find an equal challenge ahead. What is poor Indy to do?

Anyone who has introduced change into a corporate environment will empathize with his situation. You know the decision to break away from the past is the right one, you run eagerly and embrace change, only to find half way through the journey, your path to success becomes blocked.

I’ve been working with my test team for a while now moving from a process driven approach to a more of an Exploratory one.

Its not been without its challenges. Some concepts I’ve introduced have been welcomed warmly but the reception to others has been a little icy. In particular I’ve tried to move the team away from a test case management system. This was met with real concern and there was quite a resistance to the idea.

This troubled me as while I understood their concerns, I knew the system was limiting the generation of new testing ideas.

But how could I overcome this resistance? And really was it worth it? Perhaps the changes I had already made would be enough? The company was already more than impressed with the changes I had made so far.

I felt like Indy at the foot of rope bridge, how the hell was I going to solve this one?

So I stood at my crossroads and dithered. Oh God, did I dither. I ummhed and ahhed and pondered what to do. . But worse, I knew my indecision was making the situation worse, and that the more I dithered, the harder it would be to rid ourselves of the dust bag of tired and well worn ideas.

Indy at this point, decides his only move is to cut the bridge leaving everyone to hang on for their lives.

Fortunately, unlike Indy I had a reliable and trustworthy sidekick. Together, we setup a task force within the team to attack the problem. After some discussion we decided our approach needed four cornerstones. They were:

1) Creativity.

However we tested, our approach needed to enable us to foster and encourage creativity. With creativity comes new ideas, new models, new tests and so discover new bugs.

We’re covering this one with a number of approaches. One is to improve tester skill through practice and coaching. I’ve also created a folder of ideas for people to draw upon to help trigger new ideas.

2) Visibility

We wanted to be able to provide reporting on any testing we do. The reporting has to be simple yet with sufficient detail to ensure that our stakeholders understand what we have tested and why.

We have our trusty whiteboard which mostly hits the spot. We need to be able to pull up our actual testing including results in an easy to manage way. We’re looking into BBExplorer to handle that.

We will also track any essential test results on wiki in the form of a test report at the end of each iteration.

3) Coverage

We wanted to have some way of ensuring that key functionality/key features are always tested.

We most likely will rely on our test case management system for this, but we’re cleaning out all the dead wood and making the tests lighter and less authoritative.

4) Knowledge

We wanted to create a knowledge base. Our system is complex and it requires in-depth knowledge to test some areas. We want to store that information and knowledge. We also have a serious amount of test data we want everyone to be able to access, modify and improve.

We’ll use our internal wiki for this.

What I really like about what’s happened here is that the team came up with a solution to solve the problem. It’s a team decision which has got to mean easier implementation.

I think a couple of really powerful things have come out of this. I’m listing them here:

1) Change can be scary. Not changing is worse. Get on with it.

2) Use people around you to help bring about change.

3) Never lose site of your goal. This reminds me of Scott Barber’s email signature: “”If you can see it in your mind…you will find it in your life.”

I feel good. I hope my team does too. We faced a challenge. We examined it, questioned it and overcame it and we’ve all come out sharper, enlightened and positive about the changes ahead.

Now that’s what Exploratory Testing is all about.