Without Solid Automated End-To-End Regression Testing, Exploratory Testing is Largely Compromised
Test Automation and Exploratory Testing complement each other.
7 min readAug 23, 2022
Table of Contents:
· How is manual testing conducted on my own projects?
∘ Automated End-to-End Testing (via UI)
∘ Manual Testing
· The problems with Exploratory Testing when there is no automated E2E regression testing
· Exploratory Testing compliments Automated testing too
· FAQ
Exploratory Testing is not a new term, “coined by Cem Kane in 1984” (Wikipedia). During my 20+years’ experience in software development, few software projects had formally planned Exploratory Testing initially but might perform “manual testing” under the flag of ‘Exploratory Testing’ later. I have observed a pattern.:
- Detailed Manual Test Plan first
This would mostly be irrelevant later. - Test Design (manual testing)
Manual testers create test designs (typically in Spreadsheets or some kind of vendor tools such as QualityCentre) and this phase usually takes some time. - Start Test Execution
It went OK for a few iterations, then … - Drop the test design (mostly), just focused on regression issues and high-priority features.
Basically, entering a fire-fighter mode. To make it…