Exploratory Testing with the Team, a Journey Worth Taking with Maaike Brinkhof

For a while now, the motto for agile testers has been: ‘acquire more technical skills so you can support the team better’. However, you almost never hear the motto for developers: ‘improve your testing skills so you can support the team better’. Even in an agile context, you still see testers doing the bulk, if not all, of the non-automated testing.

But wouldn’t it be more effective if the testers teach the whole team how to explore? Can you imagine the power of a whole team being able to test an application effectively?

Exploratory Testing is great to teach others because it uses everybody’s unique point of view, experience, and biases when interacting with the application under test. As a tester, you can take the lead in switching your teams' mindset with regards to quality and test responsibility, even if you are a junior tester. You can do more than you think!

In this talk, I will share how I started this challenge with my team by organising Exploratory Testing Sessions. What was successful? What was hard? My goal for this session is to inspire you to try this out with your own team.