Exploratory Testing: Making Use of Micro-heuristics

Talk Description

Did your spider sense ever just tingle? Have you ever been asked how on earth you knew to look there? Have you ever thanked your lucky stars that you decided to try that thing out?

When we are exploratory testing, our brains are working on multiple tasks and multiple levels. One of the things we are constantly doing is deciding what to do next based on what we’ve just seen. And yet, when someone asks us how we knew what to do, we don’t often have a good answer.

The answer is “micro-heuristics” – how we decide what to do next based on what we’ve just learned. In this Masterclass, Alex shares example micro-heuristics that she has used over the years and how you can go about identifying your own. Alex goes on to discuss the positive impact micro-heuristics can have, particularly when demonstrating how highly skilled Exploratory Testing is. Using micro-heuristics, you will finally be able to describe the awesomeness and skill behind exploratory testing, as well as be able to teach and practice it better.

This Masterclass was kindly sponsored by Applitools. Applitools is on a mission to help test automation, DevOps, and software engineering teams release apps that are visually perfect -- by providing the only commercial-grade solution that validates the user interface of any app in a fully automated manner. Find out more about Applitools.

By the end of this session, you'll be able to:

Alex Schladebeck

Head of Quality / CEO

Alex is a passionate tester whose favourite topics are quality, agility and humans. She is CEO and Head of Quality at Bredex GmbH. In these roles, she supports colleagues, customers and teams on their journey to better quality - be it in products, in processes or in their communication. In previous roles, she was responsible for enabling teams and growing quality. Now she enables others to do that work, and works on nurturing a system in the company where everyone can flourish. Alex views the world through the curious eyes of a tester and loves learning new things. She shares her knowledge and experience in workshops, coaching sessions and as a speaker or keynote speaker at conferences.