Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing 1st Edition

Another great book from Pragmatic Programmers that is worth reading whether you are in management, software development, analysis or testing. The thoughts are well laid out, the author is personable, the chapters are organized well, and lots of real world examples are provided from specific projects.In my years of working in software development I have noticed to paths testers take. Chaotic, where they initially try to break the system with the most extreme choices they can, and spec testers that work closely to specific test cases. If a person applies the principles in this book to software testing it will lead to respectable feedback to the developers for addressing deficiencies (whether those are bugs or expected functionality that is lacking). The benefits of both the harsh and spec based testing will be made manifests in exploratory testing.The chapter on chartering is excellent, because it not only proposes a good practice for software testing but for addressing a multitude of problems. It is as follows: Explore ___ with ___ to discover ____. Outside of testing software consider its application to acquiring virtues, trying out new team practices, or making any type of major "trial" to see if a process is in somehow improved.The Test Heuristics cheat sheet is excellent for beginners, and is worth going over with your newer software testers so that they are providing value above that of just a standard user testing the software.I would recommend this book and encourage members of my team to read it.

I wanted to know how to understand the code I have to work with. This book presents a lot of great advises how to start. Maybe it is mainly for testers, but as a developer which has to work with legacy code it is also valuable.

Great book. Gives a lot of insights into testing. A must read.

Elisabeth crushes the myth that exploratory testing is just clicking around and hoping for bugs. She shows that there is skill required to be a good exploratory testing and how you can learn and practice this skill. If you are familiar with exploratory testing, you will be inspired. If you are new to the topic, you will learn about it.The book is easy to read and each chapters is meaningful on it's own.In my opinion it is a must read for anyone who works with software development no matter if you are a tester, programmer, scrum master, manager, etc...

The concept of exploratory testing has been around a long time. All testers have heard about it, and I think most experienced testers do it, without realizing it. Trying to explain what they are doing however is an obtuse task, and that tends to give a cowboy, or renegade reputation to this approach. This book does a great job of explaning the concept of this testing approach and, it also explains how this is actually a process which is plan-able, executable and report-able. Highly recommend this read for beginners and experts alike.

Not only is the topic vital for every software maker to understand, but Elisabeth’s writing is powerful. It’s clear, honest, and authentically genuine—not words I normally think of when I think “technical book.”

A good read if you want to learn from the experience of others.

I've known and followed Elisabeth since 2004. She's an amazing thought leader not just in testing, but in software delivery. This book is a must-have for teams (NOT JUST TESTERS!) trying to improve the value they're delivering to their customers. It's clear, it's concise, it's extraordinarily well-written, and extremely useful in day-to-day shipping of software.