SeaStar Quality Conference 2023

The Problem Being Addressed

Rob Sabourin observes that, today, many software testers are challenged to quickly identify
product quality concerns amidst turbulent project contexts. Business, technology, and
organizational factors change frequently. Testers are forced to continuously adapt, to think on
their feet, and to provide stakeholders, team members and even system users, with meaningful
feedback about quality concerns, and operational readiness.

There are many different test automation technologies which can facilitate the control and
observation of software. Rob notes that, among his customers, test automation technologies
are mainly limited to implementing automated verification checks, as part of regression suites, in
continuous integration and deployment processes.

This tutorial will address the problem of how test automation tools, methods, and techniques
can be effectively used to facilitate, and improve the efficiency of, exploratory testing.

Tutorial Content

Rob will share insights about his assertion that “not all test automation is regression testing”.
Exploratory testing involves the design, and execution, of tests as the testers learns about the
system. Rob will share examples of how he has used test automation during charter driven,
session based, exploratory testing. Delegates will see how test automation tools enable control,
and improve observation, of systems.

Exploratory testing can also benefit from automation in test design. In this tutorial Rob will
share many examples how test design can be automated with various tools and scripts. Rob
will provide a couple of automated test design exercises for delegates to gain some hands-on
experience. Delegates will use tools available on the internet and also create a couple of basic
Python scripts.

Examples shared will include exploratory testing of:
 Reconnaissance charter of a Microservice Architecture using a Rest API
 Claims testing charter of an Internet Search Engine – SevaSearch vs Google
 Dynamic analysis charter of network traffic actual versus billed via a major American
internet service provider.

Rob will share test charters, findings, scripts, and deliverables as well as comment on the
effectiveness of automation to support the exploration.