Collaborative Exploratory and Unit Testing

Maaret PyhäjärviEmail: <maaret@iki.fi> | Twitter:

maaretpMaaret Pyhäjärvi & Llewellyn FalcoNimeä | Attribution (Finland)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/fi/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/fi/deed.en

A Course Experience in a Mob

How We Became How We Are

Testing as Performance (Exploring) vs. Testing as Artifact Creation

Certainty“I know what I

know”Exploit

Caution“I know what I don’t

know”Explore

Amnesia“I don’t know what I

know”Expose

Ignorance“I don’t know what I

don’t know”Experiment

Looking at World from Different Angles

Unit

Test

ing

Expl

orat

ory

Test

ing

Testers don’t break your code, they

break your illusions about the code.

-- adapted from James Bach

What Testing Gives UsUn

it Te

stin

g

Expl

orat

ory

Test

ing

SPECFEEDBACKREGRESSIONGRANULARITY

GUIDANCESERENDIPITY

MODELSUNDERSTANDINGTesting as

artifact creation

Testing as performan

ce

A Few Ideas of Exploratory Testing

• It’s not just about GUI and finalized features– You can explore an API– You can adapt to known limitations

• It’s not just for functional– You should do exploratory performance testing

• It’s not without automation– Sometimes you need to do things humans can’t do!

– exploratory test automation• Repeating is seldom an issue

– Vary the data, the environment, the story around your testing – exploratory regression testing

A Few Ideas of Unit Testing• There’s units of many sizes, really

– Gravitating towards behaviors as units• It works great for expressing and

recording intent– Spec, Feedback, Regression, Granularity!

• There’s more than xUnit – E.g. ApprovalTests for more powerful

asserts

LEARNING TO COLLABORATE

1st session on unit testing

* http://visible-quality.blogspot.fi/2015/01/a-learning-journey-with-unit-tests-just.html

Strong Style Pairing“For an idea to go from your head to

the computer it must go though someone else’s hands”

*http://llewellynfalco.blogspot.fi/2014/06/llewellyns-strong-style-pairing.html

Farming vs. Hunting

“Look at me” Pairing

Exploratory Testing

Why do this?

“It’s about getting the best (not the most) out of everyone”

Qua

lity

Qua

lity

Qua

lity

Some devs care about testingPairing & Mobbing

Remote desktop

More powerful unit tests

Some testers are great product owners

MindMaps are amazing

Skilled tester exist

Testers don’t report everything

* http://visible-quality.blogspot.fi/2015/09/my-first-full-day-of-mob-programming.html

That would’ve been a

nasty one to find later

Thank you.

@maaretp(please connect with me through Twitter or

LinkedIn)