Planning Exploratory Testing

Use this skill when the useful question is "what do we not know about this yet", and a list of pre-written test cases cannot ask it.

Exploratory testing is not unscripted clicking. It is simultaneous learning, test design, and execution, made accountable by three things: a charter that says what the session is for, a timebox that makes coverage measurable, and notes that make the session reviewable by someone who was not there. Without those three it is indistinguishable from a demo, which is why it gets dismissed.

When to Use

• a feature is testable but its requirements are still moving
• scripted regression passes while users keep reporting problems
• a release needs a risk sweep and there is not time to write cases first
• a bug was found and its neighbourhood needs sweeping for siblings
• a third-party integration, migration, or legacy area has no coverage and no documentation
• an automation suite needs candidate scenarios grounded in real observed behaviour

Operating Principles

• A charter is a mission, not a script. It names an area, a purpose, and often a specific risk. It never lists steps.
• Timeboxed, so coverage is countable. Sessions are 45, 60, or 90 minutes. "We explored for a while" cannot be planned against or reported.
• Notes are evidence. What was tried, what happened, what was questioned. Written during the session, not reconstructed afterwards.
• Bugs are a by-product, not the objective. The deliverable is information about risk. A session that found no bugs but mapped an area is a successful session, and the notes prove it.
• Follow the surprise. When something is unexpected, chase it and record the detour. That is the mechanism working.
• The charter's questions get answered or explicitly left open. An unanswered question that nobody wrote down is lost coverage.

Workflow

Phase 0: Frame the mission

Establish before any charter is written:

• what changed, or what area is under-known
• what would hurt most if it were broken (feeds charter priority)
• who the users are and what they are trying to accomplish
• what environment, data, and accounts are available
• how much time exists in total

If the area is a diff or a release candidate, take the blast radius from analyzing-regression-scope rather than re-deriving it.

Phase 1: Write the charters

The house format, from ./resources/charter-templates.md:

Explore [target] With [resources: roles, data, tools, devices] To discover [information: risks, behaviours, inconsistencies]

Charter quality rules:

• one area per charter; a charter covering "the whole checkout" produces notes nobody can act on
• name the resource, because it constrains the session usefully: "with an expired card", "on a throttled 3G connection", "as a read-only admin"
• the "to discover" clause is the completion criterion; make it something a reader can tell was answered
• prioritize before writing more. Five charters aimed at real risk beat twenty aimed at surface area

Split charters into three buckets: must run, run if time, and backlog. Say which bucket each is in.

Phase 2: Choose the heuristics

Pick the lenses for each charter from ./resources/heuristics-cheatsheet.md rather than improvising in the moment. The usual starting set:

• SFDIPOT to derive coverage across structure, function, data, interfaces, platform, operations, and time
• CRUSSPIC STMPL for quality criteria beyond "does it work"
• Tours (money, landmark, back-alley, saboteur, obsessive-compulsive) when a charter needs a repeatable angle
• Boundary and state heuristics for input-heavy and workflow-heavy areas

Name the heuristics in the charter. It makes the session repeatable by someone else and reviewable afterwards.

Phase 3: Run the session

Timebox strictly. During the session:

• take notes continuously, in the format from ./resources/session-notes-template.md
• record setup, test ideas tried, observations, questions, bugs, and detours
• capture evidence as you go: screenshots, HAR files, console output, request ids, exact timestamps
• when a surprise appears, follow it, and write down that you did and what you dropped to do it
• when blocked, record the blocker and switch charters rather than burning the box

Track the session's time split as you go, roughly: test design and execution, bug investigation and reporting, setup and environment. The split is the most useful number in the debrief.

Phase 4: Debrief

Every session ends with a debrief, using ./resources/debrief-checklist.md. Cover, in order:

• Past: what happened in the session
• Results: what was learned about the area
• Obstacles: what got in the way
• Outlook: what is still unexplored and what the next charter should be
• Feelings: the tester's confidence in the area, stated plainly

The last one is not a soft extra. "I do not trust the refund path and I cannot say why yet" is a valid, actionable finding, and it is the one a status report loses.

Phase 5: Convert the output

A session produces four kinds of output. Route each:

Automation candidates need a stated reason: it is high risk, it is expensive to check by hand, it will regress. Not everything found by exploring deserves a permanent test.

Phase 6: Report the coverage

Report in sessions and charters, not in feelings. The coverage summary in ./resources/session-notes-template.md gives:

• charters planned, run, and outstanding
• session count and total time
• the time split across design, investigation, and setup
• areas covered, with a confidence level per area
• areas deliberately not covered, with the reason

That last line is what makes an exploratory report usable in a release decision. Hand it to assessing-release-readiness.

Common Failure Modes

• charters that are scripts: numbered steps and expected results, which is a test case wearing a charter's name
• no timebox, so coverage cannot be counted and sessions run until interest runs out
• notes written from memory after the session, which lose the surprises and the detours
• measuring the session by bug count, which rewards shallow sweeps and punishes deep ones
• exploring the area that is easy to reach rather than the area that carries risk
• the tester learned something important and it stayed in their head because there was no debrief
• every finding turned into an automated test, including the ones that will never regress
• exploratory results reported as "we tested it and it looked fine", which no release decision can use

Resource Map

• ./resources/charter-templates.md - charter format, worked examples per context, and charter smells
• ./resources/heuristics-cheatsheet.md - SFDIPOT, CRUSSPIC STMPL, tours, and input, state, and data heuristics
• ./resources/session-notes-template.md - during-session note format, coverage summary, and a worked example
• ./resources/debrief-checklist.md - the PROOF debrief, questions to ask, and the routing decision per finding

Related Skills

• designing-functional-tests - when exploratory findings should become structured cases or a regression slice
• analyzing-regression-scope - when the area to explore should be derived from a diff
• reporting-bugs - when a session finding becomes a defect report
• designing-test-data - when a charter needs deliberate inputs prepared in advance
• verifying-acceptance-criteria - when exploration exposes a gap between built and specified behaviour
• assessing-release-readiness - when session coverage feeds a go/no-go decision
• testing-application-security - when a charter targets authorization or input handling

Definition of Done

This skill is complete when:

• every charter names a target, its resources, and what it should discover, and none of them contain steps
• charters are prioritized by risk into must-run, if-time, and backlog
• each session is timeboxed and its heuristics are named up front
• notes were written during the session and carry evidence for every observation
• every charter's "to discover" question is answered or explicitly recorded as open
• each session has a debrief covering past, results, obstacles, outlook, and confidence
• findings are routed to bugs, automation candidates, requirement questions, or the next charter
• the coverage report states what was not covered and why