Some specialists are sure that every software testing type is in some sort an exploratory testing. But functional testing or performance testing requires the test cases and test scenarios that should be designed beforehand. And for exploratory testing, any test suites are not needed.

Besides that, unit tests or system test cases usually have some restrictions of input combinations or any other aspect of product usage. Concerning exploratory testing, only the tester’s imagination may be a limitation.

Every procedure of checking software product quality starts with defining of the main concept and goals of testing. The tester or the test manager formulates the concept of the checking procedure. Each testing types is oriented to the end users and their needs. All this is relevant for exploratory testing too.

What May Testing Concepts Be?

• To detect and check the contradictions in software manuals.
• To define the potential ways of files corruption.
• To check the integration with external applications.
• To try all available ways of data input.
• To check the product UI according to the standards.
• To test the product capacities.

In general, software testing procedures of different types are interconnected and interrelated. For instance, exploratory checking and automated testing together are more effective. Recorded and rechecked exploratory tests (if any) can be easily automated. If any issues occur within the auto tests, then the reason for error can be detected with the applied exploratory technique. The automation principle simplifies the process of bug detection and simplifies it a lot.