Many engineers don’t use heuristics (guidelines / reference frameworks) to do exploratory testing (commonly referred to – manual testing)

One really good heuristic is – Risk based testing:

For exploring a newly coded feature, if time permits one can spend a lot of time ‘exploring’ and answering what if’s, obviously that’s not advisable.

Often this activity gets time bound by the time engineers can buy, or what is left at the end – and based on their own understanding, try to test whatever they can

Risk based testing allows to take a more holistic & systematic approach in allocating time and answering the question – what is important to test

This is one of the biggest mistakes in testing I see, hardly any thought process going into deciding ‘what should be prioritized to test & automate’.

In trainings I design, we ask engineers to learn and practice the basics of risk based testing BEFORE learning to automate.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Testing #AgileTesting