Exploratory Testing Week - Challenge 3 - Exploratory Testing a Product

# Challenge 3: Exploratory Testing a Product

This challenge is one of the Exploratory testing week challenges that get you thinking about and practising Exploratory testing. Our challenges offer activities for you to learn new skills and knowledge as well as practise Exploratory testing. Whether you are just starting out in Exploratory testing or looking to try out something new. We have the challenge for you.

Introduction

Exploratory testing is a fantastic way to get to learn how a product truly works. But it requires practise to develop our exploratory testing skills. In this activity we’ll get an opportunity to both practise exploratory testing and identify how we can identify ideas for testing.

Purpose

This activity is designed to get you doing exploratory testing and reflecting on your skills and ability to come up with test ideas.

Activity

For this challenge we would like you to:

  1. Either create an exploratory testing charter, or select one from the previous activity if you carried it out.
  2. Using no testing aids, carry out an exploratory testing session for no longer than 30 minutes
  3. Once you’ve completed your first testing session. Run a second exploratory testing session, this time google for different testing heuristics and mnemonics to expand your testing. Test for no longer than 30 minutes
  4. Once you’ve finished your testing. Sit down and compare what testing you did without the use of testing aids, and what testing you did with the use of testing aids. Write down what heuristics and mnemonics you want to keep using in the future.

Some tips:

  1. Pick a note taking approach that works for you. For example mind-mapping, sketch noting or good old pen and paper
  2. If you don’t want to do an Experience report. Why not share your testing notes in this Club thread.

Share your experience report

Did you manage to complete the challenge? Share your journey to solving the challenge and what you’ve learnt in an experience report session during Exploratory Testing Week.

What we need from you?

All we need is up to 30 minutes of your time for a demo of your solution and a chat with our host, answering questions on what you learnt. Not only will you help your peers within the community, but we’ll pay you £100 for your time! We will be focusing on this challenge on Wednesday, the 28th of April, from 5:00 pm (UK Time), so you will need to be available around this time.

Deadline to submit

If you want to get involved all you need to do is complete our form sharing which challenge you took and what you would like to share. The deadline for submitting an experience report is 16th April.

Submit here

2 Likes

I loved this activity. I have submitted my entry!

I’m looking for one more person to complete this challenge and present an ER next Wednesday night, between 7pm-9pm UK time.
You’d be paid £100 for you time and effort.

@alexm one question we didn’t get to during your experience report, @dila asks: Is it common for you to create such reports on daily basis(for one feature for example)?

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@dila Yes, I produce session reports on a daily basis for all my test sessions, which usually last between 2 and 3 hours. There are cases when my sessions are shorter, for example for a charter like “Re-test the 2 bugs fixed on 28/04/2021”. Something like this can take 30 to 60 minutes.
On a typical day I produce two session reports. It is the way I make explicit what and how I’m actually testing and the reports are my go-to in the event of an audit of testing.
It may seem like an overhead, but after some practice it will not take more than 15-20 minutes to write the report. Optionally, you can track this time under “Setup and admin” and include it in the session duration. You can get some metrics after writing a few reports and they can help you estimate the time it would take you to test and report new features or similar applications. These metrics can also help you improve the process:

  • tester spent most of the time on bug investigation? - this interrupts hunting for bugs and impacts testability

  • tester spent most of the time on test execution? - what new, interesting did they learn

  • was the majority of the session spent on setup? - this may indicate testability problems; why did it take so long?

This is a good article to read. It’s quite old but it is what got me into exploratory testing and session based test management. Session-Based Test Management - Satisfice, Inc.

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Here is the ExperienceReport I just presented in written form containing the links to the mentioned resources and also to the xminds I created.
If you have any questions please reach out.

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@workroomprds used these tools in his live session

https://coderunnerapp.com/

The GitHub repo James used

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Here are links to the resources and tools I referenced in my experience report. Also I’ve attached my session sheets and bug reports.
Session Based Test Management
Heuristic Test Strategy Model
FEW HICCUPPS - to which I would like to add “A” - Acceptability: the product is consistent with how good it can reasonably be, it’s good enough.
Test Formality Continuum
XMind 8 - mind mapping software
Greenshot - Capture, edit and annotate screenshots

The application that I’ve tested is MeeroDrop

Below are my Product Coverage Outline, Session reports and Bug reports.
Exploratory Testing Week Challenge 3 - Bug 1-1.pdf (574.1 KB)
Exploratory Testing Week Challenge 3 - Bug 2-1.pdf (612.4 KB)
Exploratory Testing Week Challenge 3 - Session 1 report.pdf (598.2 KB)
Exploratory Testing Week Challenge 3 - Session 2 report.pdf (654.3 KB)

1 Like