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What helps you stay disciplined about performing exploratory testing regularly?

19 Mar 2026

In this moment: Charles Penn
Charles Penn asks:

What helps you stay disciplined about performing exploratory testing regularly? I know that I can get caught up in other work and fail to take the time to do exploratory testing.

Here are some things that I think help us stay motivated and disciplined to show up for exploratory testing:
  • Training and coaching our colleagues that exploratory testing isn't a nice-to-have bit of ad-hoc testing. Sharing our knowledge gives us confidence.
  • Establishing formal exploratory testing sessions as a must have part of your release cycle, with buy-in from the team.
  • All about the outcomes. While every session can reveal helpful information and that is valuable, there's also advantages to stepping back. For example, create a diary of important discoveries found by exploratory testing sessions. Provide a quarterly summary to say, "Hey check out all these important risks we identified thanks to all these exploratory testing sessions."
  • Sharpening our observation, empathy and note-taking skills via exploratory testing is transferable to many other things we do as quality professionals and how we interact with our colleagues.
  • Reconnecting with our sense of wonder. We never quite know what's going to show up when we run an exploratory testing session and that element of being uncomfortable with the unknown can be exhilarating.
  • Sharing the good vibes. Every so often running an exploratory testing session where we just note down the good stuff feels good. We feel good doing it and the colleagues on the receiving end of the debrief feel good too.
  • Go beyond problems. As well as sharing praise, the act of exploratory testing gives us the permission to frame our ideas in the context of our evidence. We can ask questions that invite collaboration. We can genuinely feel like we are contributing to quality software. Not doing so can often leave us stuck in a mode of just checking that stuff works ok. Exploratory testing allows us to move from checker to contributor. We can't underestimate how motivational this can be.
  • It's also just fun and geeky to do exploratory testing. So seeking joy in what we do defo helps!

Thank you, Charles, for your question. Let me know if you’d like me to clarify any part of this.

FootMoTes
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Simon Tomes
Community Lead at MoTaverse
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Hello, I'm Simon. Since 2003 I've had various roles in testing, tech leadership and coaching. I believe in the power of collaboration, creativity and community. πŸŽ“ MoT-STEC qualified. I get real joy working with and supporting our wonderful MoTaverse community.

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