Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design (Paperback)

How to Find and Fix the Killer Software Bugs that Evade Conventional Testing

In Exploratory Software Testing, renowned software testing expert James Whittaker reveals the real causes of today’s most serious, well-hidden software bugs--and introduces powerful new “exploratory” techniques for finding and correcting them.

Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working at the cutting edge of testing with Google, Microsoft, and other top software organizations, Whittaker introduces innovative new processes for manual testing that are repeatable, prescriptive, teachable, and extremely effective. Whittaker defines both in-the-small techniques for individual testers and in-the-large techniques to supercharge test teams. He also introduces a hybrid strategy for injecting exploratory concepts into traditional scripted testing. You’ll learn when to use each, and how to use them all successfully.

Concise, entertaining, and actionable, this book introduces robust techniques that have been used extensively by real testers on shipping software, illuminating their actual experiences with these techniques, and the results they’ve achieved. Writing for testers, QA specialists, developers, program managers, and architects alike, Whittaker answers crucial questions such as:

•  Why do some bugs remain invisible to automated testing--and how can I uncover them?

•  What techniques will help me consistently discover and eliminate “show stopper” bugs?

•  How do I make manual testing more effective--and less boring and unpleasant?

•  What’s the most effective high-level test strategy for each project?

•  Which inputs should I test when I can’t test them all?

•  Which test cases will provide the best feature coverage?

•  How can I get better results by combining exploratory testing with traditional script or scenario-based testing?

•  How do I reflect feedback from the development process, such as code changes?

如何找到並修復逃避傳統測試的致命軟體錯誤

在《探索性軟體測試》一書中，著名軟體測試專家詹姆斯·惠特克揭示了當今最嚴重、最隱蔽的軟體錯誤的真正原因，並介紹了強大的新型「探索性」技術來找到並修正這些錯誤。

惠特克借鑒了在谷歌、微軟和其他頂尖軟體組織工作近二十年的經驗，介紹了一種可重複、可指導、可教授且極其有效的手動測試新流程。他為個別測試人員提供了小規模技術，並為測試團隊提供了大規模技術，以提升測試效能。他還介紹了一種將探索性概念注入傳統腳本測試的混合策略。您將學習何時使用每種技術，以及如何成功應用它們。

這本書簡潔、有趣且可操作，介紹了一些強大的技術，這些技術在實際的軟體交付測試中被真實測試人員廣泛應用，並闡明了他們在使用這些技術時的實際經驗和成果。惠特克針對測試人員、品質保證專家、開發人員、項目經理和架構師等讀者，回答了一些關鍵問題，例如：

- 為什麼有些錯誤對自動化測試來說是看不見的，我該如何發現它們？
- 有哪些技術可以幫助我持續發現和消除「阻礙進度」的錯誤？
- 如何使手動測試更有效，並減少無聊和不愉快的感覺？
- 每個項目的最有效的高層測試策略是什麼？
- 當無法測試所有輸入時，應該測試哪些輸入？
- 哪些測試案例可以提供最佳的功能覆蓋率？
- 如何通過結合探索性測試和傳統腳本或場景測試獲得更好的結果？
- 如何反映開發過程中的反饋，例如代碼更改？

這本書對於測試人員、品質保證專家、開發人員、項目經理和架構師等讀者來說都是必讀之作。