Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing

This page links to the hands-on exercises we'll be using in the tutorial.

Prepared for: Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing, Háskóli Íslands 27-28 January 2016

Exercises are enabled for about three months.

The 'exercises' are designed for exploration during the class. If you're browsing through this before the event, please resist the temptation - you won't get as much out of the workshop. However, you could explore the 'puzzles' instead.

Most of these exercises are Flash movies. They're safe to install, and they work on a wide range of platforms, but they need Flash. Most laptops have this installed by default, but please use the test machine (in the 'Support' section below) to check that the rest will work on your setup.

After the workshop

Thank you all for oming to the workshop, and for participating so keenly!

Here are the slides.

Here is the list of tools from the tools exchange.

Here is a relatively-current list of testing conferences. It's not complete (example: doesn't currently have Unicom's "Next generation" conferences or SQS's Iqnite series), but it is open-source and dynamically-updated. It doesn't include many peer workshops, evening events, or conferences that have a bit of testing. There are lots more of those, and on my radar at the moment are QCon, XP2016, Agile2016.

Here is Joel Spolsky's Excel talk.

Here's Puzzle 15 which we played with collectively at the end of day 1.

If you're interested, I had a fine time skiiing on Thursday night, and returned safely to London on Friday afternoon.

Exercises

Machine A

Machine B

Machine Q and split into parts A | B | C | D

Machine H

Machine D

Machine C

Machine F

Machine E

Machine G

Machine J2

Machine K

Machine M

Million Years

Mindstorms Colour Robot: in use | confirming expectations | exploring behaviours | .pdf of mindmaps of simulator: PCOs

Colour Sensor: in use | confirming expectations | exploring behaviours

Diversity: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Million-to-one: BIMJW

Real Exploration

Robert Sabourin's collection of - session notes from different testers.

Freemind 0.8.1 - java executable.
Freemind 0.8.1 - Directory

Monte Carlo thing

Parameter file

Bug shots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Web-based Generate Data by Ben Keen. Here's an unrestricted version on my server.

Raw – graphing tool by Density Design

Support

Test machine.

Go to http://www.flash.com/ if you need to update your player.

Puzzles

Puzzle 1

Puzzle 2

Puzzle 3

Puzzle 4

Puzzle 5

Puzzle 6 and 6a

Puzzle 7

Puzzle 8

Puzzle 9

Puzzle 10 (not tested...)

Puzzle 11

Puzzle 12

Puzzle 13

Other stuff

Double Session Timer

Adventures in Session-Based Testing - local - remote

Session template

Introduction to Exploratory Testing

ET Notes 1 - Scripting and Exploring

ET Notes 2 - The importance of being judgemental

ET Notes 3 - what to record

ET Notes 4 - Why Exploration has a place in any Strategy

Software testing diagram 1 and variants

Excel spreadsheet to track exploratory tests

In the directory input_text you'll find

In the directory Pictures, you'll find various self-labelled sizes and formats of pictures.

People - mainly those who blog

Adam Knight: a-sisyphean-task.com
Ajay Balamurugadas: enjoytesting.blogspot.co.uk
Alan Richardson: eviltester.com
BJ Rollinson: www.testingmentor.com/imtesty/
Cem Kaner: kaner.com
Edgren / Emilsson / Jansson: thetesteye.com
Elisabeth Hendrickson: qualitytree.com / testobsessed.com
Ilari Aegerter www.ilari.com
James Bach: satisfice.com
James Lyndsay: workroom-productions.com
James Thomas: qahiccupps.blogspot.co.uk
James Whittaker: blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech
Jon Bach: jonbox.wordpress.com
Jonathan Kohl: kohl.ca
Juha Itkonen: www.soberit.hut.fi/jitkonen
Maaret Pyhäjärvi visible-quality.blogspot.co.uk
Markus Gärtner: www.shino.de/blog
Michael Bolton: developsense.com
Mike Kelly: michaeldkelly.com
Robert Sabourin: amibug.com
Pradeep Soundararajan moolya.com/blog
Rob Lambert thesocialtester.co.uk
Scott Barber: perftestplus.com
Zeger van Hese: testsidestory.wordpress.com

Tools

BBTestAssistant
Burpsuite
Cygwin
DataGraph
Fiddler2
Firebug
Grinder
Holodeck
HyperSnap
iMacros
JMeter
OmniOutliner
Parallels
perlclip
Process Explorer
Process Monitor
RapidReporter
Raw
Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
Selenium
SnapzPro
Spector
TestExplorer
UnixUtils
VMWare
Watir

Workroom Productions

Email James

WPL site