Hello everyone! This is jeonghan from South Korea.
Iām currently taking charge of leading QA part in a small project.
Iām trying to implement exploratory approach in a testing process.
Weāve already performed some exploratory testing session.
In case of the project has finished release, are the charters should be archived or reuse as a regression test?
We also have scripted manual testing. Do we have to transfer charters into scripted test cases?
I also wanted to implement ACC matrix like this.
I found that there are test strategy in a ACC matrix. If there is a ātestā link on a cell, it shows āHow to testsā which looks like charters.
Is this proper way of reuse charter?
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Hello,
Nice to hear that you have started the journey of Exploratory Testing. We I first was part of using charters we mistakenly through the entire session report was the charter. A charter is just the direction of the testing. A goal to strive towards and not a set of instructions etc. So for the question of reusing them as regression testing I would strongly suggest not to do that. They are very easy to create.which is a little bit of the key. Then over time I typically will do the same or similar charter again, but the actual testing will be different since I will observe different things during the testing. It that makes sense.
A few patterns that I have created with regards to bugs and charters. First of I have a standard set of charters I commonly use. If I get a new feature I typically start with a āReconnaissance (Recon) featureā with the goal for me as a tester to understand better what it is all about, what I can do to manipulate the product to test the feature etc. This is not meant to find a lot of bugs but for me to learn about it. This is similar to how I use the Feature Tour. Basically I draw the map.
Then the standard charter for the main testing of an area is "Explore feature with ". If the feature have complicated states or data I will in general have a few āAnalyze stateā or something to indicate a deeper dive and focused effort together with the Explore. Typically if there were bugs that were fixed or some changes made I add a "Wrap up " to revisit what is needed. The only reusable charter here would be the āExploreā¦ā but not even that I would normally suggest to reuse as such.
For bugs I also have the pattern of āImpact testingā instead of regression to help explain that what I do is not to revisit tests, but to test for the impact of a bug fix. Where the charter would be something like āImpact test fixed bugs for accountingā etc.
To summarize the two main points, for revisit of a feature in development I use āWrap upā¦ā charters, and for general bug fixing I use āImpact testā¦ā
All of these things rely heavily on close cooperation between dev and test as well as small frequent releases and not giant batches of updates.
If you want or are forced to do a big batch regression I would suggest Testing Tours as the reusable pattern instead. For example do the User Tour, Data Tour, Claims Tour, Superficial Tour etc. for every release. And if you want to express that in charters you just have a charter like āTake the Data Tour for business critical entitiesā or āTake the Superficial Tour for all viewsā. This still encourage exploration while keeping a general focus.
Good luck!
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wowā¦ I appreciate your post!
Iāll try some patterns.
Charter could be more interesting than Iāve thought.
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Hi jeonghan,
reusing existing charters for regression is not in the core of exploratory testing (finding new information). Giving same charter to several testers is ok, you want to see different approaches to the same problem. But information that you gather as testing notes for particular charter could be used as collection of knowledge for your product and latter used as additional documentation for new future charters.
Regards, Karlo.
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Thanks a lot, karlo!
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