Explore It! (Pragmatic Bookshelf)

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Elisabeth Hendrickson

edited by Jacquelyn Carter @jkcarter

Software is full of surprises. No matter how careful or skilled you are, when you create software it can behave differently than you intended. Exploratory testing mitigates those risks.

Part 1 introduces the core, essential skills of a master explorer. You’ll learn to craft charters to guide your exploration, to observe what’s really happening (hint: it’s harder than it sounds), to identify interesting variations, and to determine what expected behavior should be when exercising software in unexpected ways.

Part 2 builds on that foundation. You’ll learn how to explore by varying interactions, sequences, data, timing, and configurations. Along the way you’ll see how to incorporate analysis techniques like state modeling, data modeling, and defining context diagrams into your explorer’s arsenal.

Part 3 brings the techniques back into the context of a software project. You’ll apply the skills and techniques in a variety of contexts and integrate exploration into the development cycle from the very beginning.

You can apply the techniques in this book to any kind of software. Whether you work on embedded systems, Web applications, desktop applications, APIs, or something else, you’ll find this book contains a wealth of concrete and practical advice about exploring your software to discover its capabilities, limitations, and risks.

“Reading this book taught me new skills and heuristics; but even better, it helped me channel my tester “spidey sense” more creatively and usefully. I keep this book handy at all times and occasionally do one of the practice sessions to keep my awareness keen. Explore It! helps me make sure our customers and our company get real value from our software. It’ll help you too.”

–Lisa Crispin, Coauthor with Janet Gregory, Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

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