Exploratory Testing

TLDR; Updated code for Selenium WebDriver Course for WebDriver v4 free online and released Open Source Profile conference video for free.

Adopting a personal approach to Testing led me to adopt an exploratory approach to Testing, one driven by unique models, decisions, skills and sources of knowledge.

In this podcast I discuss a UK government guidance document on exploratory testing.

TLDR; Observation in real time. Interrogation after the act. Bringing Interrogation closer to Observation can help detect issues during a process. The depth of Observation and Interrogation changes depending on our knowledge of the system and technology. And we may not be done, if our observation was limited.

When I test I make a distinction between Observation and Interrogation and I’m going to explain what that means, and show you hands on example of how that distinction helps me improve my testing and the scope of of my testing.

TLDR; Testing uses models to target the system, and our information is constrained by the models we use and build. We can introduce variation to increase the possibility of finding information related to bugs. We have to take care not to develop false confidence.

TLDR; An example of modelling the application flow of a simple functionality. Modelling helps think through coverage and test ideas and think about what next for your testing.

I chose the very simple I Feel Lucky functionality on Google to use as an example application for modelling to support exploratory testing. I recorded the modelling session and explained my thought processes as I went.

During the investigation of a CounterString GitHub search issue, I noticed that the search button displayed for the form I was using did not trigger the search functionality when pressed. In this post I investigate that.

When we find a bug in a system we have to make sure we can isolate it and also reduce the risk that our approach caused the bug, rather than the system having a bug.

TLDR: simple click bots from the JavaScript console can make social media and other sites easier to use

I have been using click from the JavaScript console more to: fill in forms, remove ads, remove popups, etc. In this post I explain the general principles.

TLDR: clean recon - using the app to provide knowledge about the app

Using The Pulper v 1.2 I recorded a live recon session to try and create an example of note taking, model building, risk identification and next action identification.

You can repeat the exercise for yourself and see how you get on.