Exploratory testing Vs Documentation in Agile

Manual testing is technical debt.
- A wise developer

 I was a part of a meetup where the topic was how to approach Exploratory testing in Agile. The interesting part of the meetup was to learn that many people that are now following Agile framework for development find it hard to do a complete transition from conventional methods of development. And for them, it becomes hard to define how much time to invest in Exploratory testing vs other conventional ways of testing?

 Some of the questions from the meet were -

  • How much exploratory testing needs to be documented
  • Are there any tools available in the market that can help in better exploratory testing
  • What process or strategy can help in better exploratory testing
  • To what extent we can do exploratory testing


 I can understand that people who started their career into the software industry in the '90s are more inclined towards some level of documentation. And when it comes to testing, it is more preferred to document scenarios. They have seen the shift from writing tests on excel file and sharing them on email to checking it into Confluence and test repositories. And I agree with them. To understand their point of view considers a portfolio of 15 products that integrate with each other in a production environment. There can be few products that will take time to process the request and hence are not a candidate for automation. Of course, such cases need documentation. Question is how much of these you want to document??

 I won't have to refresh your memories about maintaining/updating test cases that are crucial for production release in QC/ALM/Excel-sheets !!

 But one thing I can say, if you invest wisely in automation and automation strategies it will soon start giving the high ROI. What comes with it is a set of the upskilled team too. Test automation is inevitable for any successful product in the market but manual testing is not (especially in small products!!)
From the above graph, pick and choose where do you see yourself or your finest folks working most and investing their important time. 

 For reality check-
(1% documentation every sprint) ! = (1% documentation at the time of realease)

 The only documentation is my code.
- Another wise developer

I simulate everything that promises high ROI and saves time to automate more.
- Same wise developer

Location: Gothenburg, Sweden

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