No not the short, funny coloured alien guy….

Yesterday I attended a exploratory testing session for the latest change that my team are testing, on new feature phones. So we’re talking mass market devices, ones where a bug let out into the field can wipe out your profit and destroy your reputation. So we like to get our QA right, you could say.

Overall the session went well. We found some bugs even though the feature under test is pretty close to release maturity now. There was a great mix of developers, testers and some of the release ops team (aka the CI guys). We like to use these sessions to bring the team together. Using Agile sdlc’s helps here anyway, but having everyone testing together and helping each other is great for the team spirit and the togetherness. It was good fun.

So here’s what went well and what to try differently next time:

* Make sure you do not limit your sessions to just the testers in your company. Get everyone together, it’s fun.
* The leader of the session is important to keep things flowing. Our test lead brought ready flashed phones. And food. That helped.
* Make sure you have a structure to the session. We used charters.

And some areas to learn from and change:

* Getting results and statistics from the session wasn’t easy. Next time we will try session based (as I’ve used in other teams).
* Get some commitment from participants and make sure they come on time. People who drift in and out break the focus of those testing.
* Make sure there are chargers and SIMs with relevant features available.

Overall it was most enjoyable. I can’t wait for the next one.

*and in the true spirit of mobile, I’ve written this whole post on a Nokia E7 using cutepress. Yep, I’m still a Nokia user, and still mobile obsessed 🙂