[# MTM11] Microsoft Test Manager 11: welcome Exploratory Testing (I)

Good,

today I have to change the tool and after talking Visual Studio 11 and Team Foundation 11, today give a review of the 3rd suite tool: Microsoft Test Manager 11. (in reality with VS11 there are several more, but we split).

One of the novelties that are incorporated in this version is the ability to perform “Exploratory Testing” (don’t know what the simile in Spanish). This type of test is implemented when it was decided to test an application without guided by a test script.

Thus evidence (which is not the classic test of the mad monkey) is very useful when you work in very agile iterations, with phases of design and implementation that will be maturing as it advances the product.

The interesting thing about exploratory testing (does not like me the term), is that then we can associate them to one or more WorkItems to thus give rise to what we already know about ALM and Team Foundation. For example, if we work with a history of user with the following information:

As a < code monkey > I want < a code editor tool > so that < I can’t write awesome code >

and we started a session of exploratory testing associated with that User Story, because the errors that we find be automatically associated to the US.

Let’s see an example with my user previous story which is the number 4. When I launched MTM11, I see in the TEST section I have an option “do exploratory testing”, well, we launched and see that we have the option of selecting the User Story with which we work.

At this point, we launched the exploratory testing option and we are with the sidebar of MTM to start our tests, but without any test script.

At this point I can create, bugs, test cases, or even associate this test screenshots or additional information such as comments.

To give meaning to this test, I launched the notpad and I started to program in it.

But of course, I have found with lack of uná option “BUILD” in notepad, so I reportaré a BUG. An interesting detail at this point, is that this type of evidence, leads a full log of actions to be able to report them.

.

But it is also possible from the actions that we have done, we need create a Test Case. In this case, we take the option to Create Test Case and we will have a script of tests with the actions that I made.

When we have created these related elements, since we can see them in the log of actions of the MTM sidebar.

Finally, since our test without script we created a new session of Exploratory Testing.

We can then return to the same

or even see the other elements we have created.

And just out of curiosity, this is the ActionLog you created for my MTM

• Launch ‘% windir%\System32\notepad.exe’
• Type the following paragraph in ‘Unknown Name’ text box
• ‘ public class Demo()
• ‘ in the window ‘Untitled – Notepad’
• Type ‘ Alt, Control + “in ‘Unknown Name’ text box”
• Type ‘ Alt, Control +?’ in ‘Unknown Name’ text box
• Type the following paragraph in ‘Unknown Name’ text box
• public class Demo()
  {
  }’
• Type ‘{Up} {Right}’ in ‘Unknown Name’ text box
• Click ‘File’ menu item
• Click ‘File’ – > ‘Save As…’ menu item
• Click ‘Favorites’ – > ‘Desktop’ tree item in the ‘Save As’ window
• Click ‘Favorites’ – > ‘Desktop’ tree item
• Click window numbered 2 in ‘Explorer Pane’ pane
• Select ‘demo.cs’ in ‘ File name:’ combo box
• Type ‘{Enter}’ in ‘ File name:’ text box
• Click ‘View’ – > ‘Status Bar’ menu item in the window ‘ demo.cs – Notepad’
• Type ‘ Control + {F11}’ in ‘Unknown Name’ text box in the window ‘Untitled – Notepad’

It is also possible to exploratory testing, without involving any User Story, we leave it for another post.

Greetings @ Home

The Bruno