Category Archives: Exploratory Testing

Tester Merit Badges: Finding Your Way

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Experiments, Exploratory Testing, Tester Merit Badges

≈ 4 Comments

Recently, I began blogging over at Techwell with my Active Lifestyle resolution. As a follow up, I am writing a guest series there.

As I have mentioned before, I was a Girl Scout for a while when I was growing up and loved the exposure to new and different things that I wouldn’t have occasion to try in my everyday life as well as the structure around life skills that would later be essential to self-sufficiency. For me, there’s nothing new around the recent enthusiasm to game aspects of our day-to-day lives and, as I’ve blogged before, having structure around learning helps me to progress.

As a grown woman, I again found an interest in earning badges when a former-Girl Scout friend of mine mentioned Lauren Grandcolas’ book You Can Do It!: The Merit Badge Handbook for Grown-Up Girls to me. It’s full of experiments modeled in the style of Girl Scout badges and reduces the potential intimidation of attempting new skill acquisition.

One day, after I had seen a 3D-printed octocat at the Atlanta Mini-Maker Faire at Georgia Tech, I was searching for octocat images online and I discovered the Nerd Merit Badges that reference Github, the movie Office Space, and the book The Pragmatic Programmer among other wonderful and obscure aspects of geekery. These inspired me to apply the badge concept to software testing. After all, developers shouldn’t have all the nerdy fun, though I’m pretty sure I’ve already earned my Family Tech Support and Homonyms badges… (For my word nerds, contrast with homophone here.)

Allow me to preface this experiment by recognizing the interval of time a Girl Scout takes to earn a badge is not a month. Girls fulfill these requirements over time, probably interspersing activities from several badges over the course of many months. I recognize that neither you nor I will necessarily complete all the requirements for each month’s Tester Merit Badge and that’s fine. Checking everything off the list is not the point. We’re here to learn and step outside our comfort zones, so start where you’re comfortable and stretch yourself a bit!

For the inaugural Tester Merit Badge, I have designed the Explorer badge as an introduction to exploratory testing. I am modeling it after the requirements of the Girl Scouts of America’s Finding Your Way badge.

Girl Scout badge Finding Your Way

Girl Scout of America badge: Finding Your Way

Requirements
  1. Know Your Maps. Be able to explain 3 diff. types of maps.
  2. North, South, East, West. Show you know how to use a compass.
  3. How Long and How Far. Use map to determine time to specific place.
  4. Walk the Distance. Estimate time to walk distance and try it.
  5. Map Maker. Draw map of a route with a legend or key.
  6. Map of the Place. Draw map to scale of a specific place.
  7. Make a Model. Make 3 dimensional model.
  8. Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass. Use sun, stars and nature.
  9. Trail Signs Traffic. Use trail signs to set up a mini-trail for others to follow.
  10. Bus and Train Maps. Learn to use bus or train maps. Try your route.

See the first Testing Merit Badge on the Techwell blog!

Image source

ET, Phone Home!

09 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Approaches, Experiments, Exploratory Testing

≈ 1 Comment

Composition

Although I am no longer the newest recruit on my employer’s Quality team, I am still something of an alien creature to the folks back at the mothership (i.e. home office). However, I have been slowly getting to know them through video conferencing, especially my fellow Quality team members. We have been experimenting with paired exploratory testing, but in my case we cranked it up a notch to *remote* paired exploratory testing. (You know testers don’t like to keep it simple, right?) This added an interesting layer of exploration to an already exploratory experience. (This meta goes out to you, Jace and Will S.) Now, each member of the team has a Skype account, establishing a common medium for communication, and we are learning the basics together. While we contended with screen repaint, we were forced to discuss the products more in depth to make use of the lag time and to give some context for each newly displayed page. This also gave us a chance to discuss the testing process, the collaborative online Quality space, our documentation strategy, and a bit of product history. Oh yeah, and we did some testing.

Since I’m still a newbie, I pretty much expect to feel a bit lost in the woods when it comes to the rest of the company’s product suite. Paired exploratory testing (or ET for the testing aficianados among you) gave me a peek into the Daxko-verse. My fellow testers know the lay of the land and so are better positioned to provide test ideas inspired by the suite’s world as we know it – soon to be rocked by my team’s product! In return, I got to ask the naive questions about what we were looking at, what terminology meant, and how it all fits together. Sometimes, having a second set of eyes isn’t enough. You need someone to ask the dumb questions. Stand back, people, I am a professional at this.

Paired ET fosters the Agile Principles:
1. Continuous Feedback
2. Direct Communication
3. Simplicity
4. Responding to Change
5. Enjoyment

We are still working out how to run the sessions. Does the person on the product team pilot or co-pilot the session? Or do we take this rare opportunity to do some concurrent exploratory testing? How long do we test together? Do we test both products back-to-back or does that just leave us yearning for caffeine and a stretch break? Personally, I am loving this. It’s so much fun to play with the new and novel, and I hope that this livens up the regression routine for my home office folks. If nothing else, it is a great opportunity to geek out about testing methodology and learn a bit about what works in our context.

The best parts:
•Finding bugs!
•Communication
•Knowledge sharing

Can’t wait to get into it again this afternoon.

Addendum: Now that we have completed the initial experiment in the vacuum of ignorance, I am free to research other approaches to paired exploratory testing. I paid particular attention to Agile testing as a new mindset that encourages transferring testing skills to other team members so that the whole team shares responsibility for testing.

Read more from Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory, Brian Marick, Cem Kaner, and James Bach