What are Pros and Cons of Exploratory Testing?

Any tester, knowingly or unknowingly, at least once used methods of exploratory testing during the software product testing. Although today this kind of testing is still not very popular, though it has a number of significant advantages.

Exploratory testing being antithetical towards the scenario approach is the simultaneous creation and execution of tests. This method is characterized by high productivity and convenient use. Sometimes, by implementing this approach a testing team is more likely to detect bugs or errors in the system that were not discovered during the more detailed inspections.

3 Main Benefits of Exploratory Testing:

1. Less time expenses thanks to that it does not require special pretreatment and depends more on the cognitive thinking of the tester.
2. Using general facts on basis of the previously obtained results to get an exact information about the specific error or system behavior.
3. Orientation on the fact that product has a tendency to successfully pass a certain type of test cases.

Any software testing company should suggest its testers that in spite of such significant advantages there is also the flip side, forgetting which they can stumble upon a risk of software quality reduction.

2 Basic Limitations of Exploratory Testing:

1. Testers are forced to strictly and persistently follow a certain type of scenarios to verify the success of their performance tendency.
2. Some important defects may be overlooked.

Performing this type of testing software testers are not particularly constrained in their freedom – they can rely on their skills and experience. Of course, exploratory testing is very comfortable and pleasant, but one should not forget that there are other types of testing – manual testing, functional testing, automated testing and so on.

Source: QATestLab