Like the music in a jam session, exploratory testing is supposed to be non-scripted and spontaneous. Its unstructured nature makes it an effective test method when requirements are lacking, time is short, or other methods are not yielding important bugs. But some project managers dismiss exploratory testing because the traditional implementation does not have mechanisms to measure progress and does not meet the need for traceability back to requirements. Jon Bach, co-inventor of an exploratory testing method called Session-Based Test Management, discusses how managers can solve these problems with exploratory testing using a simple, effective test measurement technique. By measuring three basic activities of testing (setup, execution, and reporting), this session can help testers and test managers estimate their efficiency and the time it takes to explore the same features on the next release.

Using open source tools in a development and test environment can be a big relief for your budget. However, open source remains a foreign and often frightening concept for many developers and organizations. Today, open source options are available for all types of tools used in the development process. In this session, you will gain a better understanding of the tradeoffs between choosing open source and commercial tools. In addition, you will learn about the wide variety of open source tools available for many operating environments and how to locate the most robust ones. Danny Faught, who has actively evaluated open source tools as they have evolved over the last five years, provides an honest analysis of the benefits and difficulties you may encounter using these tools for development.

• Open source tools to consider for you and your team

The period 2002-2004 was one of enormous progress in figuring out how testing fits in on agile projects. Test-driven design is more about designing and writing the code than about finding bugs. New testing tools such as xUnit and FIT came out and received a lot of use by early adopters. The hopeful notion that customers would write acceptance tests to find bugs was expanded, challenged, and deepened. With all that progress, it's hard to be dissatisfied with these methods in agile projects. But past ways of thinking are holding us back. To make further progress, we have to split our notion of testing into two parts: the task of after-the-fact product critique, and a role that has nothing at all to do with bugs and, really, little to do with the word "testing." Brian Marick, a founding member of the Agile Alliance, explains what that role presents and some ideas on how to fill it.

Design and architecture decisions made early in the project have a profound influence on the testability of an application. Although testing is a necessary and integral part of application development, architecture and design considerations rarely include the impacts of development design decisions on testability. In addition, build vs. buy, third party controls, open source vs. proprietary, and other similar questions can affect greatly the ability of an organization to carry out automated functional and performance testing-both positively and negatively. If the software or service is delivered to a separate set of end-users who then need to perform testing activities, the problems compound. Join Jay Weiser to find out about the important design and architecture decisions that will ensure more efficient and effective testability of your applications.