Exploratory Testing: Benefits, Techniques, and How to Do It

Exploratory testing became one of the crucial testing approaches that ensure application quality while maintaining the necessary production speed. Nowadays, QA teams use various testing techniques in their routines, including agile approaches for qualitatively evaluating the developed software. Traditional testing approaches rely more on predefined test scenarios, unlike exploratory tests, which depend more on adaptivity and unpredictability.

In today’s article, we will explore the importance of including exploratory testing methods in application evaluation.

What Is Exploratory Testing?

Exploratory testing is a specific testing approach in which QA members don’t have to spend time on test planning. The test evaluation and design run simultaneously. Unlike traditional scripted testing, this strategy doesn’t require a structured plan for proper operation.

Testing teams frequently resort to exploratory testing in agile conditions when the specific requirements remain unclear, or the team is limited in time or resources. This approach allows the developers to behave like end-users, increasing the chances of locating unpredictable bugs or defects.

Example of Exploratory Testing

We have already discovered that exploratory testing should be performed when the program is created under limited circumstances. In this section, we suggest you examine this testing approach in a real-world scenario. Let’s imagine that the tester of an e-commerce site is asked to find the flaws in the checkout scenarios.

• Quick editing of the site. During the exploratory testing process, the tester will initiate rapid changes in the shopping cart to verify that the system can withstand dynamic modifications without errors.

• Entering an incorrect shipping address. Afterward, the corresponding specialist might purposely enter the wrong shipping address to check whether the system reacts to the error. If not, the QA team will start investigating the issue’s root.

• Changing the payment method. The tester might verify the system for errors at mid-checkout by changing the payment method. It allows the team to observe if any issues occur during the updates of shipping, taxes, and totals and the overall responsiveness of the platform during such action.

As a result of this action, the tester might identify the issue with recalculating the total price, which might lead to incorrect billing, frustration from the customer’s side, and a decrease in trust in your product.

Nevertheless, since the issue was identified in the early development stage, the tester might pass the problem on to the development team for further elimination and resolution. Thus, the product’s reputation will not suffer due to an unpleasant situation such as overcharging.

This simple situation highlights the positive influence that exploratory testing might have on software testing practice. By properly implementing session based exploratory testing, developers might find and resolve issues that are challenging to find with rigid methodologies.

Benefits of Exploratory Testing

Unlike the traditional predefined testing methods, exploratory testing can go beyond the scripts. It allows you to effectively uncover and solve various bottlenecks before harm is done. However, that is not the only undisputed benefit that the mentioned testing routine can offer you. In the section below, we will reveal some other advantages of including exploratory testing in your QA routine.

Identify Unexpected Problems

Firstly, exploratory testing allows us to identify issues that might be missed with automated or scripted cases. By mimicking real-world conditions, developers might identify serious problems that remain invisible for standard tests. However, exploratory testing also allows the QA team to recreate the specific conditions a particular bug reveals itself under.

Encourage Creativity in Testers

Since the specialists are not limited to conducting the tests in any way, it unlocks their ability to boost their creativity in implementing this approach. Unfortunately, the traditional testing routine may frequently restrict the teams and put them in conditions where a decent result may only be achieved under certain conditions. This condition is removed with exploratory testing, leaving the testers with room for the boldest decisions.

Speeds Up Defect Discovery

In an agile environment, the product’s usability is the key to the customer’s satisfaction and future profits. That’s why rapid identification of the problems is vital for providing effective submission of the testing routines. The exploratory testing approach allows you to identify and solve problems much quicker than when you stick to traditional testing experience in the product development journey.

Improves Test Coverage

Test coverage also significantly improved when it came to exploratory testing. It’s connected with the fact that, unlike the predefined tests, the exploratory routine doesn’t have a specific path, which expands the evaluated area. As a result, in a single approach, the specialist can check different workflows, features, system responses, and user interactions. As a result, by simply expanding the area of the influence, the exploratory test can allow you to identify the missed bottlenecks easily.

Useful For Usability Testing

Finally, integrating exploratory testing into your QA routine can eliminate unpleasant surprises, such as bugs, and significantly improve your product’s usability. Since testers usually evaluate the program from the user’s perspective, they can examine their creation subjectively. This can help them identify ineffective workflows, confusing navigation, or other elements that might spoil the app’s perception.

Exploratory Testing Techniques

We already discussed the definition of exploratory testing, so let’s examine the main techniques for successfully exploring your app. Below, we have gathered the main exploratory approaches for successful evaluation.

Session-Based Testing (SBT)

Session-based testing, or SBT, is a great way to organize your exploratory routine. This technique involves defining the testing session based on the charters and focusing on certain features or parts of the developed program. Thus, you can maintain flexibility while increasing the effectiveness of each routine.

Freestyle Testing

Freestyle testing is the perfect definition of exploratory testing, meaning it has no restrictions or scripts. During the process, the testers simply explore the app, relying on their intuition and experience to identify possible weaknesses or bugs.

Tours-Based Testing

This technique implies a structured approach since the tour-based testing routine evaluates specific data arrays or groups of features. During such sessions, testers focus more on the applications’ critical aspects, ensuring that all of the program’s critical parts run as necessary.

Cognitive Walkthroughs

The cognitive testing type is a step-by-step evaluation process that focuses on the possible pain points of your end-users. During this routine, the specialists carefully check whether the whole app experience is intuitive and user-friendly to prevent any inconvenience for your future audience.

Heuristic Evaluation

This approach involves evaluating the product’s design using established UI/UX practices. That means the testers check the progress against certain UI/UX templates to improve the user experience and overall product perception.

Pair Testing

Last but not least, pair testing is an unusual technique that requires two testers to evaluate the product simultaneously. During such a session, one specialist will focus on one aspect of the program while the other examines a different side. This approach proves worthwhile, especially in cases where double defect detection is required.

How to Do Exploratory Testing

By following the simple rules listed below and the strict structure, you can increase the effectiveness of the chosen exploratory testing services and improve the overall quality of each test run.

• Define scope and objectives. Firstly, start with the identification of the areas that you want to evaluate (e.g., performance, security, usability, etc). Arrange the steps that have to be taken and follow the plan to simplify the process.

• Prepare the test environment. Define the environment and tools necessary for running a smooth testing routine. If AI-powered tools are applicable in your case, consider them.

• Execute tasks and take notes. Once the preparation is done, start the execution of the process, and do not forget to make notes. This will significantly help in further testing.

• Document and share findings. Documentation and report creation might sound like monotonous manual labor, but in fact, it’s one of the vital steps that can ensure the future refinement of your progress.

• Collaborate and iterate. Finally, the results received must be carefully discussed during the sync calls with your colleagues. Share your findings with the developers and designers to brainstorm improvements.

Is There a Place for Automated Exploratory Testing?

So, is there a place for exploratory testing automation? Let’s not beat around the bush and confirm that implementing certain automotive efforts can greatly assist your team during the testing journey. By adding automation to exploratory tests, you can simplify analyzing large datasets, identifying anomalies, and repetitive tasks. However, it can’t replace human intuition, experience, and creativity.

In the meantime, specific analytics tools, session recordings, and other instruments may provide valuable insights and boost the effectiveness of the testing process. Automatic error detection can speed up the error detection process, yet human intervention for the assessment and review is required. Ultimately, combining manual and automotive efforts leads to better decision-making and an effective QA approach.

Conclusion

Exploratory testing is an effective and sophisticated tool that can help you uncover hidden bottlenecks, improve the app’s usability, and boost the users’ engagement. A combination of the different techniques, along with the manual and automotive efforts, can improve the defect discovery, which will help in the further successful delivery.