Exploratory or Ad-hoc Testing

Exploratory software testing is a powerful approach, yet widely misunderstood. In some situations, it can be orders of magnitude more productive than scripted testing. All testers practice some form of exploratory testing, unless they simply don’t create tests at all. Yet few of us study this approach, and it doesn't get much respect in our field. This attitude is beginning to change as companies seek ever more agile and cost effective methods of developing software.

Among the hardest things to explain is something that everyone already knows. We all know how to listen, how to read, how to think, and how to tell anecdotes about the events in our lives. As adults, we do these things everyday. Yet the level of any of these skills, possessed by the average person, may not be adequate for certain special situations. Psychotherapists must be expert listeners and lawyers expert readers; research scientists must scour their thinking forerrors and journalists report stories that transcend parlor anecdote.So it is with exploratory testing (ET): simultaneous learning, test design and test execution.This is a simple concept. But the fact that it can be described in a sentence can make it seem like something not worth describing. Its highly situational structure can make it seem, to the casual observer, that it has no structure at all. That’s why textbooks on software testing, with few exceptions, either don’t discuss exploratory testing, or discuss it only to dismiss it as an unworthy practice. Exploratory testing is also known as ad hoc testing.