{"id":177,"date":"2010-08-15T20:04:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T03:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=177"},"modified":"2010-08-15T20:04:05","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T03:04:05","slug":"et-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/et-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"ET and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a big fan of exploratory testing. I\u2019ve used the approach<\/em> long before I knew what it was called and think it\u2019s the core of good testing. it\u2019s so ingrained in the general approaches I\u2019ve used in my career that I often don\u2019t differentiate between exploratory testing and plain-old-testing (I\u2019ve gone as far to say explicitly that all good testing is exploratory in nature, but as with most times I\u2019ve used the word \u201call\u201d, I\u2019ve found exceptions).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been working on my ET skills for over 18 years, so it\u2019s nice to see so much recent emphasis on the approach in blogs and books. As I said, I think it\u2019s the core of good testing, so a strong foundation in ET can only help testing improve overall. As with any hot topic in any field, there are many strong advocates, and there are definitely \u201ccamps\u201d of thought on what exactly ET is. On a side note, those of you who know me, know that I am certainly not afraid to take jabs on just about any of the subjects I\u2019m passionate about \u2013 both in person, and in this blog. I once made a small (a few words) comment in a blog post about ET and \u201cbelonging to a club\u201d that brought down a deluge of email reactions that I still ponder frequently. To this day, I both regret the remark (it was a thoughtless jab), and remain somewhat dumbfounded by the reactions to the comment.<\/p>\n

Anyway\u2026I recently introduced ET to my (still sort of new) team at Microsoft. Actually, I didn\u2019t really introduce it as much as I revealed<\/em> it, as I discovered a natural talent throughout the team that went far beyond what I was able of teaching them. <\/p>\n

But let me back up a bit\u2026<\/p>\n

I have given several presentations to my team on a variety of testing topics. I\u2019m a big believer in testers having a big \u201ctoolbox\u201d and knowledge on when and where to use those tools. I noticed early on in my time on the team that some testers would get so caught up in \u201crunning tests\u201d, that they forgot to engage their brains and think<\/em> about what they were doing. I also noticed that although most testers were experts in their feature area, that some had limited knowledge of the rest<\/em> of the product. So, at a regularly scheduled brown bag (lunch time tech talk), I gave an intro \/ overview on ET. To follow up, I asked if there were any volunteers who would like to take part in an ET session with me to practice (with the secondary goal of learning more about the overall product). I quickly had a group of four volunteers, so I set up a time, and we were off to the races.<\/p>\n

The format was:<\/p>\n