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Getting a Grip on Exploratory Testing

Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 9:00 AM - Friday, July 03, 2009 at 5:00 PM (GMT)

London, London, City Of

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Ticket Information
Ticket Type Sales End Price Fee Quantity
Full price £630 + VAT   more info Ended £630.00 £0.00 N/A
Early booking - 10% discount £567+VAT   more info Ended £567.00 £0.00 N/A
Event Details

2-day coached workshop. Strictly limited to 12 participants.

 

Exploratory Testing is a discipline. Focussed on the just-delivered system, it exposes real-world problems more rapidly and more reliably than approaches which concentrate on prior expectations. It forms a powerful complement to scripted testing, and is especially powerful when matched with the large-scale confirmatory testing found on agile projects. Good exploratory testers find better bugs, and give fast, clear feedback to their teams.

Many testers are able to work without scripts and explore a system. However, most take a single exploratory approach, and so become less effective when they have exhausted that approach. Many teams use exploratory testing, but do not know how to manage it effectively.

This course allows participants to experience a range of exploratory techniques in a disciplined framework that will allow exploratory testing to be managed and integrated with existing test activities. The course is built around hands-on, brain-engaged exercises designed to enhance and reinforce the learning experience.

Participants will discover:

  • The test design skills to probe a system and trigger a bug
  • The analysis skills to model the system and understand a bug
  • The discipline to manage their exploration and sustain their bug rate

This course is a comprehensive guide to exploratory testing, with exercises deigned to engage testers of all abilities, and structured workshops to help participants use and share the lessons learned. The course will introduce participants to a wide variety of approaches to exploratory testing – parsing the system, systematic exploration, modelling for success and failure, questioning, attacks and exploitations. Starting with three basic exploratory frameworks, we will construct models of the systems under test, and use those models to enhance our testing and to judge problems found. We will develop attacks and exploitations to reveal deep risks, and look at the potential risks in target technologies.

Throughout the course, we will use session-based testing to support the personal and team discipline necessary to support effective exploration, and will examine ways that ET can be managed within existing processes.

This tutorial will be of greatest use to test analysts, senior testers and test managers, but will also be immediately relevant to designers and coders. Direct experience of exploratory techniques is not necessary, but delegates with one or more year’s experience of hands-on testing will get most from this course.

 

Learning Objectives

  • Understand principles of exploration, and application to software testing
  • Introduce control and discipline by using session-based exploration
  • Understand the application of ET to discovery of risk and verification of value
  • Use three frameworks for exploratory testing - transformations, states, maps
  • Construct and use models during ET, and use models to help judge problems found
  • Understand ways of increasing effectiveness of ET with tool use and broad focus
  • Understand test selection within ET
  • Use attacking techniques to reveal deep information
  • Recognise opportunities for application of ET
  • Arrive at an understanding of personal exploratory style


Hands-on exercises and facilitated discussions will be used throughout the course. Each section will be concluded with a wrap-up session to summarise and reinforce key points. Participants’ workbooks contain sections to record conclusions; participants are encouraged to review these after the course is completed.

 

PresenterJames Lyndsay

James Lyndsay is an independent Test Strategist, based in London. He started testing in 1986, and has been the principal consultant at Workroom Productions since its formation in 1994. As a consultant, he's worked in a variety of businesses and project styles; from retail to telecommunications, from rapidly-evolving internet start-ups to more traditional large-scale enterprise. He's worked to technical requirements for companies that make and sell software, and to commercial requirements for companies that buy and use software. James has used, taught and championed hands-on exploratory testing wherever it made sense.

James is a regular speaker at international test conferences, delivering invited keynote talks at STAREast, AsiaSTAR and EuroSTAR. In 2002, he received "Best Paper" awards at STARWest and at EuroSTAR for "Adventures in Session-Based Testing". An active participant in the testing community, James spent five years as an internal irritant to the ISEB exam process and has taken part in peer workshops including WOPR, LAWST, WHET, WTST, ExTRS and AA-FTT. He is the convenor and facilitator of LEWT, the London Exploratory Workshop in Testing.

 

Equipment

Many exercises are computer-based, using Workroom Productions’ custom-built “Black Box” machines. These Flash-based interactives run in-browser, on Linux, OS X and Windows, without installing executables or library files. Delegates are encouraged to download exercises before the tutorial, and bring their laptops to use and share.

 


 

Early-bird Discount

The 10% discount is available to those who book and pay by 8 June.

 

Cancelation / Substitution

 

If you are registered to attend the workshop but can’t be there, you are welcome to substitute another workshop participant at no additional charge.  Simply notify us of the substitution before the first day of the workshop.  If you notify us that you wish to cancel your participation in this workshop before June 5, 2008, we will refund your full fee.  If you notify us that you wish to cancel between June 3 and June 17, we will refund 50% of your fee.  After June 17, no cancellations will be accepted.

If we have to cancel the workshop for any reason, we will send you a full refund within 1 week.

 

When

Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 9:00 AM
- to -
Friday, July 03, 2009 at 5:00 PM (GMT)

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Where
Royal Statistical Society
12 Errol Street
EC1Y 8LX London
United Kingdom

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