Sometimes, you find yourself searching for bugs without any specific purpose or direction. This occurs when your QA team lacks the proper mindset and strategy for exploratory testing. Without clear guidance or goals, your test coverage will be inadequate, and you'll have less productive use of your time. In his book Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design, James Whittaker provides a practical solution to help you level up your exploratory testing.

Exploratory testing has become a more common topic amongst testers. Exploratory testing provides valuable quality related insights that otherwise would escape unnoticed. Unfortunately there’s still a long way to go until everyone can unlock the full potential exploratory testing. Not everyone has heard about it, not everyone understands exactly what it is, not everyone has taken the most out of it.

According to ISTQB, test design is “the process of transforming general test objectives into tangible test conditions and test cases.” Effective test design is a crucial part of SDLC as it helps quickly identify defects in product implementation or gaps in requirements.