Inside the Explorer's Notebook

Exploratory testing is more than just thinking of clever test ideas and executing them on a whim. It's a craft, requiring practice of several classic scientific skills-one of those skills is careful documentation of observations and conjectures. But as much as testers are scientists, they are also explorers. They must document their actions and observations during testing in such a way that stakeholders can easily understand the important problems and issues that are being discovered. In this track talk, expert exploratory tester Jon Bach compares exploratory test notes from several software projects to the journals of historical adventurers, showing how a tester's
journey through unchartered software can reveal similar risks and riches. Jon will discuss three common note-taking styles, as well as good, bad, and ugly notes he has seen (and produced!) in his ten years of testing.