Exploratory Testing IS Accountable
Exploratory Testing IS Accountable
Submitted by michael.a.bolton@gmail.com (Michael Bolton http://www.developsense.com) on Wed, 27/01/2010 - 22:23.In this blog post, my colleague James Bach talks about logging and its importance in support of exploratory testing. Logging takes care of one part of the accountability angle, and in an approach like session-based test management (developed by James and his brother Jon), the test notes and the debrief take care of another part of it.
Logging records what happened from the perspective of the test system. Good logging relieves the tester from having to record specific actions in detail; the machine does that. The tester is thereby free to record test notes—a running account of the tester's ideas, questions, and results as he tested, or what happened from the perspective of the tester. Those notes form the meat of the session sheet, which also includes
The session sheet is structured in such a way that it can be scanned by a text-parsing tool written in Perl. The measurements (in particular the coverage measurements) are collected and collated automatically into reports in the form of sortable HTML tables. Session sheets are kept for later review, if they're needed.
If logging in the program isn't available right away, screen recording tools (like BB Test Assistant, Camtasia, Spector, ...) can provide a retrospective account of what happened. (An over-the-shoulder video camera works too.) Note that these tools simply record video (and, optionally, sound—which is good for narration). Programmatic repetition of the session isn't the point. Nor is the point to have a supervisor review the screen capture obsessively; that wastes time, and besides, nobody likes working for Big Brother. The idea is to use the video only when necessary—to aid in recollection where it's needed, and to help in troubleshooting hard-to-reproduce bugs.
We suggest, where it doesn't get in the way, taking the test notes on the same machine as the application under test, and using the text editor window popping up as a way to link the execution of the application with bugs, test ideas or questions. For bugs that don't appear to be state-critical you can also take very brief notes for later followup. Include a time stamp, where the time stamp is an index into the recording; then revisit the recording later if more detail is called for. (In Notepad, you can press F5; in TextPad, Edit/Insert/Time, and it's macroable; other text editors almost certainly have a similar feature.)
Between a charter, the session sheet, the oral report, data files, and the logs and the debrief, it's hard for me to imagine a more accountable way of working. Each aspect of the reporting structure reinforces the others. This is why I get confused when test managers talk about exploratory testing being "unaccountable" or "unmanageable" or "unstructured": when I ask them what accountability and management means to them, they point lamely to a pile of scripts or spreadsheets full of overspecified actions that were written weeks or months before the software was built, or they mumble something about not knowing what goes on in a tester's head.
Any testing approach is manageable when you choose to manage it. If you want structure think about what you mean (maybe this guide to the structures of exploratory testing will help), identify the structures that are important to you, and develop those structures in your testers, in your team, and in your approaches. If you want accountability, provide structures for it (like session-based test management), and then require accountability. If you find that your testers aren't sufficiently skilled, train them and mentor them. (And if you don't know how to do that rapidly and effectively, we can help you.)
If there's something you don't like about the results you're getting, manage: observe what's going on in your system of testing, and put in a control action where you want to change something. If you want to know what's going on in a tester's head, observe her directly and interview her as she's testing; have her pair with another tester or a test lead; critique her notes; debrief her and coach her, until you get the results that you seek. If you want to supercharge the efficiency of your testers, work with the programmers and their managers to focus on testability, with special attention paid to scriptable interfaces, logging, and at least some programmer testing. (It might help to identify the information-hiding and feedback-loop-lengthening costs of the absence of testability). If you find individual debriefs taking too long, or if you want to share information more broadly within the test team, try group debriefs at the end of one day or the beginning of the next. If you want to add features to the reporting protocol, add them; if you want to drop them, drop them. Experiment, re-evaluate, and tune your testing as you see fit.
And if you have a more manageable and accountable approach than this for fostering the discovery of important problems in the product, please let us know (me, or James, or Jon). We'd really like to hear about it.
Logging records what happened from the perspective of the test system. Good logging relieves the tester from having to record specific actions in detail; the machine does that. The tester is thereby free to record test notes—a running account of the tester's ideas, questions, and results as he tested, or what happened from the perspective of the tester. Those notes form the meat of the session sheet, which also includes
- coverage data
- who did the testing
- when they started
- how long it took
- the proportion of time spent on test design and execution, bug investigation and reporting, and setup
- the proportion of the time spent on on-charter work vs. opportunity work
- references to log files, data files, and related material such as scenarios, help files, specifications, standards, and so forth
- and, of course, bugs discovered and issues identified.
The session sheet is structured in such a way that it can be scanned by a text-parsing tool written in Perl. The measurements (in particular the coverage measurements) are collected and collated automatically into reports in the form of sortable HTML tables. Session sheets are kept for later review, if they're needed.
If logging in the program isn't available right away, screen recording tools (like BB Test Assistant, Camtasia, Spector, ...) can provide a retrospective account of what happened. (An over-the-shoulder video camera works too.) Note that these tools simply record video (and, optionally, sound—which is good for narration). Programmatic repetition of the session isn't the point. Nor is the point to have a supervisor review the screen capture obsessively; that wastes time, and besides, nobody likes working for Big Brother. The idea is to use the video only when necessary—to aid in recollection where it's needed, and to help in troubleshooting hard-to-reproduce bugs.
We suggest, where it doesn't get in the way, taking the test notes on the same machine as the application under test, and using the text editor window popping up as a way to link the execution of the application with bugs, test ideas or questions. For bugs that don't appear to be state-critical you can also take very brief notes for later followup. Include a time stamp, where the time stamp is an index into the recording; then revisit the recording later if more detail is called for. (In Notepad, you can press F5; in TextPad, Edit/Insert/Time, and it's macroable; other text editors almost certainly have a similar feature.)
Between a charter, the session sheet, the oral report, data files, and the logs and the debrief, it's hard for me to imagine a more accountable way of working. Each aspect of the reporting structure reinforces the others. This is why I get confused when test managers talk about exploratory testing being "unaccountable" or "unmanageable" or "unstructured": when I ask them what accountability and management means to them, they point lamely to a pile of scripts or spreadsheets full of overspecified actions that were written weeks or months before the software was built, or they mumble something about not knowing what goes on in a tester's head.
Any testing approach is manageable when you choose to manage it. If you want structure think about what you mean (maybe this guide to the structures of exploratory testing will help), identify the structures that are important to you, and develop those structures in your testers, in your team, and in your approaches. If you want accountability, provide structures for it (like session-based test management), and then require accountability. If you find that your testers aren't sufficiently skilled, train them and mentor them. (And if you don't know how to do that rapidly and effectively, we can help you.)
If there's something you don't like about the results you're getting, manage: observe what's going on in your system of testing, and put in a control action where you want to change something. If you want to know what's going on in a tester's head, observe her directly and interview her as she's testing; have her pair with another tester or a test lead; critique her notes; debrief her and coach her, until you get the results that you seek. If you want to supercharge the efficiency of your testers, work with the programmers and their managers to focus on testability, with special attention paid to scriptable interfaces, logging, and at least some programmer testing. (It might help to identify the information-hiding and feedback-loop-lengthening costs of the absence of testability). If you find individual debriefs taking too long, or if you want to share information more broadly within the test team, try group debriefs at the end of one day or the beginning of the next. If you want to add features to the reporting protocol, add them; if you want to drop them, drop them. Experiment, re-evaluate, and tune your testing as you see fit.
And if you have a more manageable and accountable approach than this for fostering the discovery of important problems in the product, please let us know (me, or James, or Jon). We'd really like to hear about it.