More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team

Part IV: Testing Business Value

In her book Explore It! (Hendrickson, 2013), Elisabeth Hendrickson describes two facets of a test strategy (pp. 5–6). Per Elisabeth, “checks” are tests that verify that “the implementation behaves as intended under supported configurations and conditions.” She explains exploring as testing that involves scouting around the areas that the checks don’t cover, “designing and executing tiny experiments in rapid succession using the results from the last experiment to inform the next.” In Elisabeth’s opinion, a comprehensive test strategy needs both checking and exploring.

The distinction between checking and exploring is interesting, but we’re not sure that testing definition goes far enough. Testing is more than “just” ...