One of the key aspects of exploratory testing is Prediction. By background research (specialist knowledge, interviewing others or looking at specifications, etc) or by observing software, we understand the models involved and can predict other behavior based on a model or model interactions. While some of this involves predicting positive behaviors, a skilled exploratory tester is often able to leverage failure models to find bugs. Once a bug is found, further investigation may lead to other variations of the bug often with a higher impact.

I'm aware of the fact that some other companies are offering training courses with very similar titles and descriptions to my own.

In answer to the folk who occasionally email me asking if these, are, indeed official parlezuml.com training courses, the answer is a flat "no".

In the past, training companies have approached me to sell my courses through them. But the deals offered were usually so poor - sometimes offering me a flat daily contractor fee to deliver my own training material! - that I quickly learned my lesson, and now you can only buy my courses directly from me.

Want to be a ticket taker?Want to be a pizza maker?Lobsterman. Jockey. TV fixer.Baller dancer. Soda mixer.Do you want to be an astronaut?Or keeper of the zoo?You’ve got to do something.What DO you want to do?This is the time of year that I reflect on what I want to do. The quote above is from [...]

benerator is the leading open source test data generator. Creating a valid amount of realistic load test data is essential for any serious load and performance testing. As of release 0.4.0 benerator incorporates mature and comfortable generation capabilities for relational data, providing convenient database configuration and primary key generation, script support in generators and all import file formats (csv, flat, DbUnit), as well as a staging concept.

Sometimes people define exploratory testing (ET) quite narrowly, such as only going on a short-term bug hunt in a finished application. I don't define ET that narrowly, in fact, I do ET during development whether I have a user interface...

The guys from Stelligent have another great post. This time on Continuous Production, the next step after Continuous Integration.