Exploratory Testing — ”Testing Tours”
Exploratory testing is a method of testing software. It's different from traditional software testing methods which are formal and scripted. Although exploratory testing is unscripted still it comes with some basic principles and loosely defined strategies that a tester can use during the test sessions. It's important to have some principles and strategies so testers can set a track of objectives for each session, this will in turn help in gazing overall progress with testing coverage at different test milestones.
One such technique is “Testing Tours” sometimes referred to as Tour Testing. The idea is to structure testing as a tour of a city. City in this context is referred to as software to be tested (AUT). The city is further divided into different districts; each of these districts has a tour that can be taken to achieve specific objectives.
This article covers a few such known tours if this interests you I further recommend “Exploratory” reading.
Different tours are carried out in different districts, the idea is to achieve specific test objectives based on features.
Districts
Business district
This represents key features of the application of MVP for the release. This should be the main attraction of the tourist(tester).
Tours:
Guidebook Tour: The idea is to tour this district as per the tour brochure provided to you. In this phase a software tester investigates requirements, and documentation to test features. In this tour, the objective is to test features by strictly following product documentation.
Money Tour: This tour is a visit to the most advertised place in the business district. This translates in testing terms, testing MVP of the current scope.
Landmark Tour: In this tour, the tourist visits important landmarks in an unplanned manner with no defined plan. In this tour, the tester is expected to explore all the features in the delivery scope. The idea is to ensure all important features are covered by testing.
Garbage Collector Tour: Every city produces garbage although tourists may not it is something a major attraction, if you are in few tourists who can make up their mind about what garbage to look for you, may actually find some interesting thing. A tester in this session performs a set of activities based on predefined objectives, for example, a tester can target error messages and performs actions that should raise and handle the error.
Historic District
This is a visit to the historic part of the city which typically has old buildings and old stories from the city.
Bad-Neighborhood Tour — In this tour tourist visits historic places in the city, this place has some old history which makes it a good tourist attraction. In testing terms, a tester should plan to revisit most buggy areas of the product based on past experience, chances are there are more gems waiting to be uncovered
Museum Tour — Tour of relics collected in from past and stored in one place, such as a museum tour for a tourist. This tour ensures to visit features which have no code change during multiple release cycles and are still relevant to the product’s feature.
Entertainment District
This tour is not a main attraction of the city, but this makes the city complete. In application terms, this refers to supporting features but not the most important features.
Back Ally Tour- Visiting back ally of the city where not all tourists reach but interest few of the tourists. Idea is to test features that are not so frequently used.
Tourist District
This visit is a special district targeted to tourists only and may not interest non-tourists. In testing terms taking a path that, a normal user may not take with the product’s features.
Lonely Businessman Tour — This tour is targeted at a lonely businessman who wants to kill some time. In this case, a tester takes the longest journey to complete a test.
Collector’s tour — A tourist collects souvenirs of the city on this tour. From a test perspective, a tester looks into the product with no precondition or end goal, in the process documents all the outputs which are encountered during this session.
Hotel District
A hotel district is a relaxing district where tourists come back after visiting another district and feel relaxed.
Rained-out tour — Not all touring days are the same, there are some days when a tourist starts a tour but is not able to complete the tour. In testing terms, a tester starts testing but never completes the tests but rather chooses a cancel option wherever possible.
Couch Potato Tour — This tour covers a bare minimal tour of the city and will not cover anything exhaustively. In test terms a tester traverses the product only with the default values, or if the input is required in a form providing only mandatory fields.
Seedy District
This is a notorious district and not the most recommended district for tourists, this district is full of shady people and scam artists. In testing terms playing around this area, a tester expects to achieve something like crash the application or perform privilege escalation.
Antisocial tour — In this tour expectation is to visit areas outside the allowed parameters of a normal city tour or perform actions that are not legal. During testing, the tester is not bound by normal rules and can provide inputs that may not be relevant to the product.
