Test charter

As explained in Software Testing with Generative AI

A test charter is a concise mission statement that defines the focus and purpose of an exploratory testing session.

A test charter is a concise mission statement for an exploratory testing session. It defines what to explore, the resource or data to use, and the information to discover, keeping attention on a specific risk. section 8.1 section 8.1.2

Build and use charters through a risk-focused sequence:

• Identify a product or functional risk. section 8.1
• Convert the risk into a focused exploration mission. section 8.1.2
• Prioritize charters by risk, track which risks have been explored, and assess the value of each session. section 8.1
• Use tester judgment to identify risks, because generating them remains heuristic rather than procedural. section 8.1

Explore <target>
With <resource>
To discover <information>

Use the compact pattern “Explore <target> with <resource> to discover <information>” to make a charter’s scope and purpose explicit. section 8.1

From risk to charter

Risk: bookings are not shown in the report view. Charter: explore how bookings are rendered in the report view with a collection of bookings to discover if all bookings are shown correctly. Variants can use very large collections, different personas, malformed data, or proxy tools to examine readability, understandability, and error handling. section 8.1.2

How Software Testing with Generative AI covers it

How deep it goes

Defines a structured format and risk workflow, but leaves risk identification to heuristic tester judgment.

Examples

Uses flight-provider results, booking report views, tax calculations, personas, large datasets, and malformed data.

What it assumes

Assumes identified risks and tester judgment, while teaching how to encode risks as structured exploration missions.

What you can do after

Apply it via exploratory testing to prioritize sessions and investigate defined product risks.

How it connects

Connects exploratory testing with risk-based testing, quality characteristics, and large language models.

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Related concepts

• exploratory testingconfigures · Exploratory testing is an investigative testing approach in which testers learn about software, design tests, and execute them concurrently while seeking unexpected behavior or defects.
• riskproduced by · Risk is the possibility and potential impact of an adverse outcome arising from uncertainty.
• language modelproduced by · A language model is a computational model that represents patterns in linguistic tokens to assign probabilities to, predict, or generate sequences of language.
• promptproduced by · An input, typically containing instructions or context, supplied to an artificial-intelligence model to guide or elicit its output.
• ChatGPTproduced by · ChatGPT is OpenAI’s conversational AI service, which lets users interact with generative AI models and related tools through natural-language prompts.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Software Testing with Generative AI. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.