Note taking
Note taking came up as an area of interest out of the discussions - so we made this a focus on the debrief of the last hands-on Exploratory Testing Session (although it could easily be its own workshop!)
For handwritten notes (although you can use the base structure also for electronic notes, using sections or markup) we introduced the Cornell Method:
And introduced practices we use when taking notes or reporting, e.g.
Structure in different sections, e.g.:
- Charter
- Environment & Resources
- Time
- Question
- Bug
- Observation
- Summary for Dev
- Summary for PO
When reporting, tell a testing story:
- What I did and didn’t do
- What I found
- The values and risks
Further Resources:
- John Stevenson: Note Taking - The Cornell Method
- Rob Lambert: Explaining Exploratory Testing Relies On Good Notes
- Michael Bolton: An Exploratory Tester’s Notebook
- Alan Richardson: 10 Experiments to Improve Your Exploratory Testing Note Taking
- Jonathan Bach: Session-Based Test Management
- James Bach: Session-Based Test Management