Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design

by James A. Whittaker

How to Find and Fix the Killer Software Bugs that Evade Conventional Testing

In Exploratory Software Testing, renowned software testing expert James Whittaker reveals the real causes of today's most serious, well-hidden software bugs--and introduces powerful new "exploratory" techniques for finding and correcting them.

Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working at the cutting edge of testing with Google, Microsoft, and other top software organizations, Whittaker introduces innovative new processes for manual testing that are repeatable, prescriptive, teachable, and extremely effective. Whittaker defines both in-the-small techniques for individual testers and in-the-large techniques to supercharge test teams. He also introduces a hybrid strategy for injecting exploratory concepts into traditional scripted testing. You'll learn when to use each, and how to use them all successfully.

Concise, entertaining, and actionable, this book introduces robust techniques that have been used extensively by real testers on shipping software, illuminating their actual experiences with these techniques, and the results they've achieved. Writing for testers, QA specialists, developers, program managers, and architects alike, Whittaker answers crucial questions such as:

- Why do some bugs remain invisible to automated testing--and how can I uncover them?
- What techniques will help me consistently discover and eliminate "show stopper" bugs?
- How do I make manual testing more effective--and less boring and unpleasant?
- What's the most effective high-level test strategy for each project?
- Which inputs should I test when I can't test them all?
- Which test cases will provide the best feature coverage?
- How can I get better results by combining exploratory testing with traditional script or scenario-based testing?
- How do I reflect feedback from the development process, such as code changes?

Genres: Software, Programming, Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

My full review: http://www.iammike.org/2014/01/28/exp...

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to give this one back to the library. What I got out of it from the 80 or so pages I read was important - I am still learning things about testing every day and this gave me a good outline of different strategies I can try while performing "manual" testing.

[Oleksandr Romanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really useful book for diving into the exploratory testing approach. The author gives us a great variety of tips and techniques on how to do exploratory testing properly and in a different contexts.

Absolutely must read book by any software tester.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good read. Lots of interesting ideas. The chapter about Tours was a bit of a struggle to read but overall a really good book.

[Oleksandr Molodetskyi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful book with good examples written by very experienced and known testing expert.

[AkelaRa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ненавиджу читати професійну літературу. В книгах по тестуванню все або дуже технічною сухою мовою написано (istqb, привіт), або так художньо, що якщо викинути всю воду, то буде 2-3 дописи. Ну 10. Але не книга.

Зате я прочитала шось професійне і це важлива галочка.
І ще підтвердила з зовнішнього джерела свої певні гіпотези щодо тестування (зокрема, автор згодний зі мною, що тестувати дизайн краще, ніж не тестувати, але краще долучати дизайнерів до тестування, ніж тестувальників до дизайну).

Перше видання книги 1965. Додані глави ап ту 2009 рік. Що диктує свої умови щодо сексистських жартів. А з новішою літературою сложна, бо все вже сказано.

Крч, це було неоднозначно, але корисно.

[Željko Filipin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book on exploratory testing. Recommended.

[Shreyas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the tourist and tour analogy!

[Viktor Slavchev · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely liked the language of the book, very approachable and easy to grasp on.
It is a good introduction to exploratory testing to somebody who never knew what it is.
Touring is a good metaphor and offers a compelling story.
Anyway. I find authors competence to speak about exploratory testing doubtful, I find the book being too shallow and not getting in depth what ET is. It also offers a lot of testing folklore that has proven to by partially true or even absolutely wrong and harmful.

[Pavel · Rating 4 out of 5]

For testers: this book covers techniques and ways to approach exploratory testing that will make it easier to focus, and find more bugs.

For developers: this book is useful in explaining the challenges in testing, and will invariably improve the kind of code you write.

The books is good. A lot of things it mentions are obvious if you have tested or written code, but the book does a good job at organizing approaches to testing, simplifying the overhead of thinking about how to test, so you can focus more on what you are testing.

The appendixes are useless in my opinion. Most of what is said in appendixes is stated in main part of the book in a more clear, concise, and organized manner. Removing these would have made the book 40% shorter.

The future predictions are somewhat far fetched, but they always are.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sit next to James Whittaker at work. He is absolutely brilliant. His book is revolutionary in its approach to manual testing. It is also extremely easy to follow and apply the concepts as he presents them. I strongly recommend this book to anyone in the software development or testing field.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was about manual testing, but didn't really offer too much insight beyond the obvious. Interesting that they decided to write a book about manual testing though.