Exploratory Testing aka Pirate Testing

As Promised - here are the slides from our meeting today.

Gary decided we should call exploratory tests 'Pirate tests' because you're using more of a 'Guideline' than a script. :) Thanks Gary!

Connie made the point after the meeting that she hopes we'll use these approaches to help us get out of the tunnel vision of only testing the specific bug we're working on. I didn't make that point as clearly as I would could have in the presentation.


One last thing... keep in mind I used a lot of information from various sources. Not all of them are noted in the slides but they are all listed at the end of the document.


Enjoy!


Link to a PDF of the presentation

Darn Cheating Gamers!

We asked around to find out what the philosphy of our co-workers was when it came to using cheat codes in games. The results were quite illuminating :




There seem to be two main groups - those who use cheat codes (for a variety of reasons) and those who think using cheat codes is...well... cheating.


One interesting thing was the same justification was used by two people for opposing view points. One said that "Developers designed the game to be used without cheats, so that is the only right way to play it" the other said "Developers added cheats to the game, so they must intend them to be used"

No-one was willing to admit to EVER using cheats in multi-player scenarios - unless, of course, the game was defined as a 'no holds barred' cheat-o-rama. Even then, the purists among the group were opposed to the idea.






We found as we collected responses that we had to protect our sources a bit. Those who feel most strongly about not using cheats were very interested to know who was on the other side of the fence. It started to look like someone might get beaten up - or worse, fired.