As the technology growing day by day, new software testing terms are always adding in software industry. So as a QA professional, it is continuous learning process to stay updated in the market. Test engineers or whoever working in this industry have to be concern about the terms and run through always. The profound fields need the exact support and concern from concerned people. Some of our readers raised such concerned and they asked about Is Adhoc Testing and Exploratory Testing are same, where there are many differences that gives them their own identity.
In today’s article let’s see:
Difference between Adhoc Testing and Exploratory Testing
| Adhoc Testing | Exploratory Testing |
| Adhoc testing begins with learning application first and then work with actual testing process. | Exploratory Testing begins with the exploring the application while learning. |
| Documentation is not a basic need of this type of testing. The QA team always attends the testing without specific documentation. | Documentation is mandatory in Exploratory Testing. To assure the quality it’s necessary to documents the detail of the testing. |
| Adhoc is about the perfection of the testing. | Exploratory Testing is more about the learning of the application. |
| Test Execution is applicable for Adhoc testing. Who is going to test the application should have proper knowledge about the sequence. | With the expanding situation of learning Exploratory Testing will help to have further knowledge about the testing result. |
| Adhoc is a technique of testing an application; this provides a significant role in the software Production. | Testers have to learn a software functions first. Exploratory Testing helps to work on that. Before testing the final application or software test engineers have to learn it through Exploratory Testing. |
| This is only one time executable testing. Engineers tests it’s once at a time, however if there is any problem found in the test then its repeated. | This is an approach of testing that combines the learning test results and creates a new solution. |
| It mostly works on the business concerns and increases the knowledge about the application. | It categorizes the problems and compare them from the problems found in past. This helps to reduce the time consumption. |
| Adhoc Testing helps to find innovative ideas from the research. | It helps to develop the application. |
| Adhoc testing is not important to execute by an expert software testing engineer. | This always needed to be done by expert. |
| Adhoc is not that bother about the test case difficulties, it run the results. | There are always difficult situations in test cases; Exploratory Testing helps to sort out it. |
| It needs some preparation to start and carry on. | Exploratory Testing doesn’t need much time to start. |
| It’s an informal method of testing. | It’s a formal test platform. |
| It works on negative testing mostly. | This testing works on positive testing niche. |
| This testing mostly connects the subsystems with the application and help to find holes while operating. | It explore the element of the application and tests them by providing an outline. |
| It does not work with workflow. | Exploratory testing works with workflow from beginning of the testing. It starts with primary objectives and collects proper information about them. |
| Adhoc focuses on the application process and test it repeatedly. | Focus is confined first in data entry areas, with interface checking. |
| Final result of Adhoc depends on the specified requirements and that gives a great vibe of problems that can be present to test formally. | Finally provides the determined result with algorithms and put it in excel for further use. |
There are many similarities between Exploratory Testing and Adhoc testing. That makes people confused about them. However there are various differences between them that is a matter of concern of experts.
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7 thoughts on “Difference between Adhoc Testing and Exploratory Testing”
Hi,
Awesome one, this article is very helpful and gud for understanding exact difference between adhoc – exploratory testing.
Thanks,
Nice, thanks.
Could you give examples to clear between adhoc and exploratory testing?
Thank you!
Please send me mobile applications test cases & related materials.
Very Good Site on Testing
Thanks,
Thank you…. that will definitely helped to understand concept.
Let me elaborate on this with an example from a project I worked on. On this project a financial institution was replacing their existing financial system with a totally new system. So they hired a slew of testers to test this new system. Being that it was so new and there were no experts or users, nor documentation to turn for help, we found ourselves going through the system with no knowledge to familiarize ourselves with it, to learn, to test, and possibly find bugs(Exploratory Testing). After some time we finally realized the need for proper training on this system and forced the vendor to hold training for the team. After training we soon realized that the system had a strange workflow and that it had many workarounds and thus wasn’t complete. So all the defects we wrote were because of this lack of knowledge and thus a waste of time. After a year and several new builds and extensive functional testing we were wrapping things up and preparing the software for UAT. Now an expert in the system, we had several testers go in and do free style testing (AdHoc Testing) to see if they could break it. Sure enough, one of the testers found that the system crashed when refreshing using the “Ctrl F5”. A great catch that was totally overlooked in functional testing.
Can you send some testcases, that will help me to get more knowledge on writing testcases