Exploratory Bug Testing
Get real insights into the behaviour of your target group. Let our Crowd check your digital product for bugs you never expected to find.
ADVANTAGES OF EXPLORATORY BUG TESTING
Let experienced testers freely check your digital product for bugs
Get real insights from real end-users – eliminating operational blindness
Make your product bug-free on every device, screen resolution, software, and OS
Live-track and export all bugs directly in your bug-tracking software (e.g. JIRA or Redmine)
Leverage Exploratory Bug Testing to bring the quality of your digital products to the next level!
What is Exploratory Bug Testing?
The term exploratory testing was first introduced in 1986 and is defined as “a style of software testing that emphasizes the personal freedom and responsibility of the individual tester to continually optimize the quality of his/her work by treating test-related learning, test design, test execution, and test result interpretation as mutually supportive activities that run in parallel throughout the project.”
So, what does that actually mean? An exploratory bug test lets testers look for bugs freely and creatively. There is no test script, no rigid plan – testers have personal freedom which means this kind of bug testing places a lot of responsibility with the testers. During the test, testers learn and iterate constantly, and find their own way to solve problems that may occur. Testers can always optimize their test run – the more experienced and creative a tester is, the more bugs he or she will find.
As the name suggests, an exploratory bug test is a functional test that encourages real-time and practical thinking of the tester. Testers decide their next steps on-the-fly and continuously adapt them as they move deeper into the software of your digital product.
The difference between an exploratory and structured bug test
When performing an exploratory bug test, the testers have a lot of freedom in how they conduct the test – but also more responsibility. Exploratory testing focuses on testing as a “thinking” activity, so it is much more customer-centric than structured tests.
Structured testing follows a test script with different cases that include expected outcomes. Testers get pre-defined test cases and are only the ones who execute them. Structured testing leaves no room for tester creativity or looking through the software on their own.
Advantages of Exploratory Testing
Exploratory bug tests are capable of finding bugs in places that might not be obvious, as opposed to structured bug tests that are made for finding bugs in core areas of your product like the checkout process or in the behaviour of a contact sheet.
As testers move freely through your digital product they will use it from a real customer perspective and may find bugs you would never have thought existed. Therefore it is very important to have testers that match your exact target group and who are experienced in software testing.
The challenge: operational blindness and fragmented device landscape
You are done with your internal quality assurance (QA) but still wonder if you might have missed an important software bug or other malfunctions? Operational blindness is a big issue here, as your users will always use your digital product differently than your developers or even your staff from other departments. So you need a way to get insights on how your target group will use your product – because customer-centricity gets more and more important during these days.
Another challenge for you might be the continuously growing device landscape. Testing software on all of the latest devices, operating systems and browser versions requires an enormous amount of test planning, resources and investment. Despite strict timelines, performing flexible & extensive tests are necessary to provide your users with the best digital experience possible.
The solution: Exploratory Bug Testing of your software in the real world
Crowdtesting makes the difference: by using the power of over 500,000 digital testing experts and the variety of over 1,000,000 devices directly at their fingertips. This approach helps you save costs, transfers your testing into the real world – with real-world conditions & influencing factors. Crowdtesting gives you the freedom to scale whenever you want and need to.
With our service, Exploratory Bug Testing, we give our Crowdtesters the freedom to complete each step in their own way. This process of functional testing in the real world helps discover the bugs that lead to the most common errors as well as special bugs that might not be covered by user stories or test cases.
Every detail of the testing process is documented by our Crowd and forwarded to your development team and their bug tracking solution (e.g. JIRA & Redmine). So bug fixes can already start while the test is still running – paving the way to a bug-free digital product. With our QA Testing add-ons Re-Test & Bug Approval, you can integrate our Crowd easily into your regression testing, integration testing and continuous optimization processes. So, it’s also a perfect fit for all agile environments.
Our crowd features many devices with a never-ending combination of operating systems and software versions. All these devices are accessible via our testing platform NEST, so device fragmentation or limits of an internal device farm is a thing of the past. Exploratory bug tests provide you with invaluable functionality feedback for your digital product from the point of view of your end-user. With exploratory testing, operational blindness is a thing of the past. Bring your software development to the next level, now, by outsourcing your quality assurance to the Crowd.
Harry
Solution Consultant QA & UX
Do you have questions about Exploratory Bugtesting? Would you like to have more information on how we can help you make your digital products even better? Just send us a message, one of our Solution Consultants will be happy to get in touch with you.
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