Mission:* In today's mission we would like you to frame your exploration on yourown.* We are about to give you a 'black box machine'.* You will have 60 minutes.* At the end of the timebox present your notes (no more than page long) to the group chat.* What to report and in what format - we leave it up to your decision.* We hope everybody will bring a unique bit of experience we all can learn from.
Ultimately it boiled down to an exploratory testing session on a practice flash applet. Because of the way the mission was framed, each individual tester, or testing pair defined the mission for themselves. Since the general feel of the mission was so open, and my instincts were to work the practice as an exploratory session, I felt there was a lot of room to try things, perhaps things I wouldn't normally have done. While some of the testers paired, I elected to go it alone this time though.
Before I get into my synopsis of the exercise and my conclusions of how that session went, I'd like to give credit to James Lyndsay who I am told is the one who produced this particular practice over at his site http://www.workroom-productions.com/. There are a number of practice exercises that could be used for some general and basic practice of exploratory testing skills. From what I've read he also has some more in depth training as well, which could be a useful if exploratory testing is an area you feel could help you in your testing efforts. I'll leave it to my readers to decide that for themselves. Now, if you'd like to try the exercise before reading my report, head on over to http://www.workroom-productions.com/papers/puzzle_03.swf and explore it to your hearts content for up to an hour. Otherwise, what follows would be considered a 'Spoiler'. So when you are ready to continue reading, please click 'Read More' below.
