Before doing the exploratory testing homework, I had a peruse of the Ministry of Testing materials and came across this really fun resource: Adam Howard – Exploratory Testing LIVE. It does exactly what it says on the tin and used a sandbox test environment of the actual website Adam works for to test a (deliberately broken) new feature live at a TestBash.

I find seeing demo’s really useful for my learning and understanding and I have a lot of takeaways from this session!

So a quick recap, the goal was to demonstrate how exploratory testing is a skill that can be developed and communicate why it’s so useful. The website is a platform for users to buy and sell, like Gumtree. The feature being tested is the ‘recently viewed’ area which show the user the last items they have looked at on the site.

My Takeaways:

Goal

It can be broad, like this one was to look at what feature does and how it works, and if it is doing so as expected. Ultimately it should be clear so that it is easily to tell if the potential bugs found fall under the scope or not to keep the focus from straying.

Breaking down the goal:

• First looked at whether it achieves showing ‘recently viewed’
• Assess how well this was done
• Approach from all the main angles e.g. in this session, choosing products from different areas covers a good range, so consider how to sample to give good coverage is important.
• Keep an eye out for unexpected behaviour

Mindmapping

It was great to see a mindmap being used in action. He uses Xmind and what I like most is the structure – the focus area ‘recently viewed’ is in the centre, then each issue gets it’s own line and its children give more detail. I like this as it breaks the issues raised into clear units, and I think it would make me consider if the issue really is tied to my charter, or whether I need to make a separate note and move on to keep the original focus.

Heuristics

• ‘unboxing’ – this was inspired by the YouTube concept where the video involves systematically pulling out one thing at a time from a haul/gift box etc and looking at it before moving onto the next. This feels like a good fit when the session is quite broad, and you are considering if it works how you would expect given it’s purpose, its good to take the time to look at a little bit at a time.

• ‘following the white rabbit’ – when something is not how you feel it should be – delve into the rabbit hole to see if you can find an answer. (In this case, check what data is being collected in the db)

Oracles

This helped me understand oracles and their use cases more. It took a while to realise they come from various different sources, so a person in the team, or a document could be an oracle to the project. Here the oracles were ‘trust’ as an important company value. It guided the bug report to involve the fact that data was being captured still in the db when the user had requested it to stop. Another was ‘user expectations’ – in reference to recently viewed items not updating their position in the list. Applying the white rabbit heuristic approach meant the source of this was identified, which would be very valuable to speed up the fix!

Both of these I think fall under the familiarity heuristic as it considers the functionality in its wider context which requires knowledge of the whole site, its customer base and the values promoted.

• It’s not just the page itself – keeping an eye on the URL and any queries added can be another useful source of information.

Further recommended resources to investigate: Explore It! - by Elisabeth Hendrickson

My exploratory session

For my exploratory testing, I am returning to the BlingRUs Website with a focus around engraving pricing. I am going to use the information on the FAQ page to establish what should be the correct amounts and try different scenarios. I am recording findings in Mindmup.

Engraving

Engraving can be performed only in the font and style shown on the images**

• 1-10 characters - free of charge
• 11-30 characters - 50 SEK
• More than 30 characters - 50 SEK per 10 characters***
• Multiple lines - 25 SEK per line****
- Note that no refunds can be made for items with custom engraving.

* Companies that want to place a larger order, please contact Gunde directly to discuss details.

** If you have special requests, such as alternative fonts, symbols or imagery, please contact Gunde directly to discuss options.

*** We use a state of the art laser engraver. Since the process allows multiple items to be engraved with the same text with ease, the extra cost is only charged once when ordering multiple items with the same text.

**** Does not apply to “The Twin” that comes with 2 lines of text.

So in the end I spent just over an hour, and it is not complete! As I worked around the areas some questions came up, that in a workplace I would clarify before starting to have the best context possible. E.g. for pricing rows, is the first row free in the pricing or not?

I think it would be a good candidate for automation as opposed to manual because there is a definitive correct answer. There are many combinations to be considered and while I liked the structure of the mind-map, it would soon become too crowded I think with the scenarios, am automation framework would be useful to cover all the various combinations and include the other additional pricing changes. Also, price testing is something that should be tested regularly as a crucial element for the business success, and I think would classify as a ‘high-risk’ area needing thorough test coverage.

I really enjoyed using the mindmap and plan to look into other methods, as well as trying out the SBTM model to guide exploratory testing.