Design of Contemporary Exploratory Testing Algorithm and Metrics

Abstract

Software testing is an inevitable phase of the software development life cycle. There is numerous software testing techniques available for different levels of testing. The objective of the thesis is to get a broader view of software testing field first with some real time interaction with the experienced testers of software companies and then to research on the technique which is actually used by testers in the software companies. To achieve the objective, a set of research questions were framed and quest ionnaire investigation was conducted with ten software companies. A technique “Exploratory Testing” found to be current trend of competitive testing industry to fulfill the demand of best quality product in short time duration. Experienced software testers shared the method of performing this technique and helped us to differentiate it from random testing. Several research papers are available for this technique but no algorithm is available till now to understand it. It also lacks metrics to measure the performance of exploratory testing. Hence the status, usage and drawbacks of exploratory testing as well as results of questionnaire investigations are reviewed in the thesis. An “Exploratory Testing” algorithm is designed as well as demonstrated in the thesis. Useful testing metrics to measure the success of this technique are also defined and their usage is also demonstrated in the thesis.