Exploratory Testing - Practical Guide

We had a small session with one of our Agile Coaches about Exploratory Testing (ET) and we came out with following practical guide. This guide is written in Scrum Context. I'll try to update this guide, when I explore more about Exploring :)

So what is Exploratory Testing? Word exploring is actually very defining word. Idea is to explore, how product the in our hands is working, and this does not mean only trying to find as many bugs as you can , but also find out how it really is behaving and come familiar with it.

How to do this?

- Product Owner (PO) should be the person, who requests this.
- PO decides the area which is going to be explored.
- You should not write own User Story out of ET, just allocate time in Sprint for it.
- Short 30-60min intensive session.
- Intensive session excludes time for preparation and analysis.
- All observations are written down, during session but not analyzed.
- Analysis happens after session.
- You can use real entities towards System Under Test, or use test tools.

That's all folks. Happy exploring :)

Dilemma of: Scrum from Above and Self-managed teams

Scrum values strongly self-managed teams, with a good reason and that probably works nicely, if Scrum has been taken first into use in R&D team(s) and after that it has spread up.

But when you are in situation where Scrum has been decided in the management and it has dropped to teams, situation is pretty much different. Job of a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach becomes very interesting when you offer the gift of self-management to persons who are absolutely not wanting it.

This is again the situation where your people skills are far more valuable than technical skills, because changing people to think that self-management is rather like freedom than a cage of responsibility, is a challenging task.