Robotic Exploratory Testing is a fresh approach to testing that can exercise more of an app's functionality in less time than other testing methods.
What is exploratory testing?
Exploratory testing is a manual software testing method where learning the app~s behavior, test case designing, and test case execution all happen concurrently.
Exploratory testing yields results faster than typical manual testing, as we spend no time with upfront test case design.
The major drawback of exploratory testing is that it is manual and, therefore, slow. The amount of test coverage we can achieve is limited by the number of testers and the time available.
Because exploratory testing is manual, it has a high opportunity cost. We can only realize the return on that investment once. Investing that same time in creating automated tests would see a return each time we execute the test.
Manual exploratory testing also suffers from a lack of traceability and reproducibility. When encountering a bug, it is hard to determine the exact steps needed to reproduce it.
What is Robotic Exploratory Testing?
Robotic Exploratory Testing has the same benefits of manual exploratory testing and addresses many of its shortcomings.
Robotic Exploratory Testing automatically learns the app~s behavior, creates tests, and executes them.
Because Robotic Exploratory Testing is an automated process, it is much faster than manual exploratory testing. It exercises much more of the app~s behavior in the same time.
Because the Robotic Exploratory Testing platform stores both the tests it creates and the results, every test has full traceability and potential for reproducibility. The Robotic Exploratory Testing platform can re-execute the tests as many times as necessary. After learning the app's behavior during its initial scans, it identifies any changes in that behavior in subsequent scans.
Integrating Robotic Exploratory Testing into your testing plan
UI level Robotic Exploratory Testing is the perfect complement to unit testing, functional testing, and manual testing. It can quickly exercise an app's behavior, both broadly and deeply, making it a perfect complement to manual and automated integration testing. The Robotic Exploratory Testing platform's ability to review the test results position it well to augment automated functional testing.
Robotic Exploratory Testing is also valuable in regression testing, where knowing if the app's behavior has changed is enough.
Benefits of Robotic Exploratory Testing
- Robotic Exploratory Testing significantly reduces time to coverage. This increased coverage will catch more bugs.
- Robotic Exploratory Testing augments your current test investments and generates a higher return than manual exploratory testing.
