July 2026
Intermediate to advanced
396 pages
11h 2m
English
Content preview from Full Stack Testing, 2nd Edition
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Chapter 2. Manual Exploratory Testing
Not all those who wander are lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Manual exploratory testing is an intense activity. You exercise the test application to explore and understand its behaviors in various situations, including ones not mentioned in the requirements document or user stories. This exploration often uncovers new user flows that were not envisaged during the analysis or development phases, as well as bugs in the existing user flows. When such discoveries happen, it is refreshingly joyous for the individual who found them, as it showcases their keen analytical and observational skills!
Typically, in manual exploratory testing, the entire application is deployed in a testing environment. The testers meddle with components such as the database, services, and background processes as they please to simulate different real-time scenarios and observe the application’s behavior. Manual exploratory testing differs from traditional manual testing, which refers to manually executing a particular set of acceptance criteria and verifying whether the application’s behavior meets the stated expectations. Traditional manual testing doesn’t necessarily exercise any analytical skills, but exploratory testing lays a green field in front of the testers, inviting them to go above and beyond what is documented or even known about the application.
Some teams underestimate the value of exploratory testing, often believing that shifting left with intensive user story ...
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