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How often do you stumble across a major problem while testing a system? Probably quite often. While we do our best to be deliberate, part of the value of our work lies in coincidences. How does that work?
A word that has been playing around in my head for years is “serendipity testing”.
It started with the movie Serendipity (2001, with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale). I can’t remember the content of the movie, but the word serendipity stuck. What does it mean?
Here is the definition from the Penguin dictionary from my high school days:
Serendipity: finding valuable things in unexpected places by sheer luck.
Three important points in this definition: “valuable”, “unexpected” and “luck”.
A well-known folk wisdom is “there is no such thing as coincidence”. Another “sometimes you have to give coincidence a helping hand”.
So, if we want to consciously apply serendipity testing, what should we do?
This is where Exploratory Testing comes in.
Exploratory testing is (unlike error guessing, see the TMAP book “Quality for DevOps teams” for an explanation of the difference) a structured approach where you do not design test cases in advance, but you do think in advance about what information you want to collect, which in turn is related to the value the stakeholders are looking for.
In the exploratory charter you describe the scope and the test ideas. This allows you to give chance a helping hand. You are deliberately going to try out certain things in a certain place. And then there is a good chance that you will come across valuable information in unexpected places. Is that a coincidence? Or have you given chance a helping hand?
So, this is my advice: give chance a helping hand by applying exploratory testing in a structured manner, with charters, test ideas and keeping a log. (download the template from www.TMAP.net !!) then you too will get the benefits of “Serendipity testing”!!
I do wish you much valuable luck J
p.s.1: After I finished this column I found on the internet that Rikard Edgren already brought the same subject to attention in 2016, I can recommend his webinar: https://huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/resources/people-skills/good-testers-are-often-lucky-using-serendipity-in-software-testing/
p.s.2: Disclaimer: NO artificial intelligence was used in writing this column (I like to be transparent about whether or not I use AI 😉
