Exploratory Testing - London
London, 2-3 July.
2-day class, £630+VAT.
To register: email James, or use our on-line registration.
Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing
Exploratory Testing is a discipline. Focussed on the just-delivered system, it exposes real-world problems more rapidly and more reliably than approaches which concentrate on prior expectations. It forms a powerful complement to scripted testing, and is especially powerful when matched with the large-scale confirmatory testing found on agile projects. Good exploratory testers find better bugs, and give fast, clear feedback to their teams. Many testers are able to work without scripts and explore a system. However, most take a single exploratory approach, and so become less effective when they have exhausted that approach. Many teams use exploratory testing, but do not know how to manage it effectively.
This course allows participants to experience a range of exploratory techniques in a disciplined framework that will allow exploratory testing to be managed and integrated with existing test activities. The course is built around hands-on, brain-engaged exercises designed to enhance and reinforce the learning experience.
Participants will discover:
- The test design skills to probe a system and trigger a bug
- The analysis skills to model the system and understand a bug
- The discipline to manage their exploration and sustain their bug rate
Course Description
This two-day course is a comprehensive guide to exploratory testing, with exercises deigned to engage testers of all abilities, and structured workshops to help participants use and share the lessons learned. The course will introduce participants to a wide variety of approaches to exploratory testing - parsing the system, systematic exploration, modelling for success and failure, questioning, attacks and exploitations. Starting with three basic exploratory frameworks, we will construct models of the systems under test, and use those models to enhance our testing and to judge problems found. We will develop attacks and exploitations to reveal deep risks, and look at the potential risks in target technologies.
Throughout the course, we will use session-based testing to support the personal and team discipline necessary to support effective exploration, and will examine ways that ET can be managed within existing processes.
This tutorial will be of greatest use to test analysts, senior testers and test managers, but will also be immediately relevant to designers and coders. Direct experience of exploratory techniques is not necessary, but delegates with one or more year's experience of hands-on testing will get most from this course.
Learning Objectives
- Understand principles of exploration, and application to software testing
- Introduce control and discipline by using session-based exploration
- Understand the application of ET to discovery of risk and verification of value
- Use three frameworks for exploratory testing - transformations, states, maps
- Construct and use models during ET, and use models to help judge problems found
- Understand ways of increasing effectiveness of ET with tool use and broad focus
- Understand test selection within ET
- Use attacking techniques to reveal deep information
- Recognise opportunities for application of ET
- Arrive at an understanding of personal exploratory style
Location
The Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol Street, London EC1Y 8LX
Nearest tubes: Barbican, Moorgate
Past participants
You can use these links to find out more about Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing, and see what past participants said.