The post “Exploratory Testing and Review” continues to prompt comments whose responses, I think, are worthy of their own posts. Thank you to Parthi, who provides some thoughtful comments and questions. I always wondered and in attempted to see the difference between the Exploratory testing that you are talking about and the testing that I am doing. Unlike the rest of the commenter’s, this post made this question all the … Read more
In a comment on the previous post, Rahul asks, One doubt which is lingering in my mind for quite sometime now, “Can exploratory testing be automated?” There are (at least) two ways to interpret and answer that question. Let’s look first at answering the literal version of the question, by looking at Cem Kaner’s definition of exploratory testing: Exploratory software testing is a style of software testing that emphasizes the … Read more
The following is a lightly-edited version of something that I wrote on the software-testing mailing list, based on a misapprehension that we who advocate exploratory testing suggest that review or other forms of testing should be dropped. Exploratory testing was, for many years, described as “simultaneous test design, test execution, and learning”. In 2006, a few of us who have been practising and studying exploratory testing got together to exchange … Read more
The Agile community (to the degree that such a thing exists at all; it’s a little like talking about “the software industry”) appears to me to be really confused about what “done” means. Whatever “done” means, it’s subject to the Relative Rule. I coined the Relative Rule, inspired by Jerry Weinberg‘s definition of quality (“quality is value to some person(s)”). The Relative Rule goes like this: For any abstract X, … Read more
There’s a mildly rollicking little discussion going on the in the Software Testing Club at the moment, in which Rob Lambert observes, “I’ve seen a couple of conversations recently where people are talking about red, green and yellow box testing.” Rob then asks “There’s the obvious black and white. How many more are there?” (For what it’s worth, I’ve already made some comments about a related question here.) At one … Read more
Eric Jacobson has a problem, which he thoughtfully relates on his thoughtful blog in a post called “How Can I Tell Users What Testers Did?”. In this post, I’ll try to answer his question, so you might want to read his original post for context. I see something interesting here: Eric tells a clear story to relate to his readers some problem that he’s having with explaining his work to … Read more
In a recent blog post, Rahul Verma suggests that all testing is confirmatory. First, I applaud his writing of an exploratory essay. I also welcome and appreciate critique of the testing vs. checking idea. I don’t agree with his conclusions, but maybe in the long run we can work something out. In mythology, there was a fellow called Procrustes, an ironmonger. He had a iron bed which he claimed fit … Read more
This is a followup to an earlier post, Questions from Listeners (2): Is Unit Testing Automated? The original question was Unit testing is automated. When functional, integration, and system test cannot be automated, how to handle regression testing without exploding the manual test with each iteration? Now I’ll deal with the second part of the question. Part One: What Do We Really Mean By “Automation”? Some people believe that “automation” … Read more
In response to my previous blog post “Another Silly Quantitative Model”, Greg writes: In my current project, the product owner has assumed the risk of any financial losses stemming from bugs in our software. He wants to release the product to customers, but he is of course nervous. How do you propose he should best go about deciding when to release? How should he reason about the risks, short of … Read more
On April 19, 2010, I was interviewed by Gil Broza. In preparation for that interview, we solicited questions from the listeners, and I promised to answer them either in the interview or in my blog. Here’s the second one. Unit testing is automated. When functional, integration, and system test cannot be automated, how to handle regression testing without exploding the manual test with each iteration? This question provides a great … Read more