Scripted testing offers a very traditional method of quality assurance testing for most development projects. This testing methodology follows a set of scenarios and testing processes to help developers adequately test their project’s functionality.

However, functional testing methodologies focus only on a project’s business requirements. This testing style verifies the output of an action, and may not provide sufficient checking of a system’s intermediate states while it performs various programming actions. This approach to functionality testing attempts to cover all perceivable usability scenarios, to anticipate any possible hiccups that users might experience with any freshly launched digital product. You wouldn’t want to put your users off with an app or website that doesn’t work the way you’ve described it would. However, would it be possible for an unknown scenario or bug to arise, that your QA team did not previously anticipate as ‘perceivable’?

A less-structured, more exploratory mindset to testing

Exploratory testing offers an approach that aims to help developers (or QA teams) spot non-obvious flaws and errors in a project. It is quite common for developers to add more to their existing code, as their project is updated with new features and improvements. Even when it comes to fixing or patching software to solve previous bugs, it helps to continuously test your project to ensure that a recent fix has not paved the way for other unseen errors.

Exploratory testing offers a way to test your project according to real-world scenarios. Some of the advantages it offers, over traditional testing methods, include a reduction in test time, less need for formal training or preparation prior to QA testing, as well as an accelerated means of bug detection. This is all possible because the exploratory testing method adopts an autonomous mindset towards user testing practices. Through this fluid approach, your development team would be able to ‘think outside the box’ when it comes to discovering non-obvious errors in code.

In a nutshell, exploratory testing involves testers in minimal planning and preparation, and maximum test execution. This allows for qualified testers to be quickly mobilised to explore as many errors as they can discover before a project is launched. Exploratory testing sessions typically last no more than two hours. Testers are provided with a clear scope of scenarios, to help them focus on a specific area through which they can conduct tests on software. Through this coordinated testing approach, it is left entirely up to your testers to determine how they would like to test the behaviour of a product before it is launched.

Gain a fresh, real perspective to testing

Essentially, exploratory testing is just an ad-hoc approach to QA testing that provides developers with a real-world view of how their digital project performs across a wide range of devices and operating systems.

The other benefit of exploratory testing comes into play, especially if your development team has been monitoring your project too closely, or for too long. Having a crowd of testers apply an exploratory testing approach to your project’s QA testing needs can help you gain a fresh perspective on what could be better.

Exploratory testing puts a fresh set of eyes on a system that you have been monitoring for errors. If your team of developers has been too involved with your project, it always helps to rope in different testers through a qualified and reliable crowdsourced testing service. With an exploratory testing approach, a tester’s imagination is the limit when it comes to discovering any bugs or areas of improvement in your project. Ideally, the perfect scenario for developers would involve combining exploratory testing methods with scripted QA testing processes. This ultimately works to help your development teams cover all possible bases when it comes to discovering bugs and potential issues, in the shortest amount of time possible.