Testing in the Dark: Improving Quality when You Don't Know the Product

Stakeholders drop software on our desks and expect us to test it without any requirements, design, or product knowledge whatsoever. About the only clear thing is the absurd and unrealistic deadline. We are expected to bend over backward, spread magic pixie dust, and heroically test quality into a product we have never heard of before. But testing in the dark is not impossible, and as Rob Sabourin shows, it can even be a very valuable and fun experience. Learn strategies to emerge from a murky fog into clear, meaningful quality insights and leverage unlikely sources about what stakeholders care about and what users really need the software to do. Rob will introduce you to methods of reconnaissance-style, charter-driven, and session-based exploratory testing and help you provide meaningful estimates to stakeholders with minimal hard information about the software under test. He also will share recent experiences of testing in the dark on chaotic and turbulent projects and how he turned his product ignorance into a testing superpower. Join Rob’s quest to find important bugs fast while testing in the dark—and you, too, will see the light.

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