Exploring

Moving on to manual testing. With an exploratory twist. How to teach a subject that may seem a bit abstract and is mostly about using your own brains? That is the question we had in mind when planning the first Exploratory Testing dojo. We ended up choosing a testing challenge that was obscure and broad but what we thought would be motivational and fun for the students. The fun part was a success, both groups seemed to really enjoy the bug hunting. I guess the challenge was motivational too because people really tried to find ways to weak spots in the website under test.

Presentations were again given and they were good. We decided to skip the Redmine part in the dojo, to keep the focus on ET. Still I would say that all students were given a good example of a bug report and a tool that could be used in tracking bugs. For a tester bugs belong to daily work so an introduction to reporting is a minimum in a testing course. One of the groups already reported a bug they found so they also had a glimpse on that.

The presenters and we gave a couple of "brain tools" for the groups before the actual challenge. It was interesting to see that both groups chose different approaches. The one I was in decided to hit the probable weak spots in the website. That was mostly forms, and translations also when they realized some problems in there. The other group chose to use some role heuristics. Both groups found plenty of small issues in translations, some logical problems, usability issues, expired certificates and also goldmines for spammers. So a lot of things in an application that is up and running. And well tested.

Prize for the groups were plus one to grades if they find and report a bug. My group has already reported one so they earned their prize. The other group had a plenty to choose from also, so most probably they will get their prize also.

We were a bit afraid that the session would be a big jumble. For my group I have to say it almost was. Still I would say that the end result was on the positive side: people had fun and used their brains to challenge the system under the test. That is testing, the rest is getting more professional. We will look into that in the next dojo when we try to find some ways to move from ad-hoc to more efficient, organized and trackable working methods.

Although I am really proud how things went on Friday some fine tuning on the challenge should have been made. If I use the same challenge again I will make it more clear and present it in a bit different way. Also the analysis part would look a bit different if I do it again. The good thing was that we went through some findings and also realized together that there were a lot of things we need to do differently to fulfill all the needs for testing. More on that next Friday...