Exploratory Testing

Older articles on Exploratory Testing by James Lyndsay

Photo by Erda Estremera / Unsplash

We build our code into relatively-simple things which work in a complex environment. The systems that result – mixing code, configuration, data, events, and other software / hardware / people systems – can surprise us.

We can choose to search for those surprises before they bite.

I've been thinking and writing about exploratory testing for years; I reckon that it's a core and necessary testing practice which doesn't yet have a firm basis in collaborative software engineering, and is often neglected in strategy and management.

This page was written as a temporary holder for some of the things I've written - it's become a resource for some people, so I'm leaving it here as a page for now. I intend to revisit all these dashed-off articles. I'll replace this page with a collection of more-recent articles as I reflect on  recent work.

For more-polished thought-on-paper, I recommend that you check out Elisabeth Hendrickson's fine Explore It!, and Maaret Pyhäjärvi's Contemporary Exploratory Testing.

Management

Techniques and support


I don't intend this page to be a collection of ET resources – others do that better. For instance, here's something from Ministry of Testing.

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