Initially I came across this book late at night while watching the keynote presentation from StarWest 2009 on stickyminds.com. Loving the ideas that James presented in the keynote, I searched the web, and ordered the book that same night (well it was early the next morning by then!).
I have mixed feelings about this book, I love the metaphor 'Tours' that James describes as the basis of the testing approach he implemented at Microsoft, and then Google. It's (the metaphor) great, because everyone one has travelled and been on a tour of some sort - be it a school trip or an overseas adventure. This means that instantly when speaking to someone about creating a 'highlights tour' of their application there is a connection and mental picture created.
It was the definition of the tours, there derivation that I thought that the book would have gone into in more detail. The webinar touched on how the tours where created, and the book gives a few paragraphs to each of the established tours, but didn't go into much further detail (that I could find).
I understand each application is different so therefore each time a tour is created it will be unique. But I was expecting some more detail on James' experience in creating the tours. Did they whiteboard the tour outline and then overlay the 'stops' or 'highlights' of the application they were testing on it? Or was it in reverse were all of the application functions identified first and then categorized?
One of the thoughts I had, was this the intent of the book was expose the thought process and idea, rather than be text book with specific examples... Anyway, I'd recommend this book for any tester it's covers some really interesting topic related to exploratory testing, and testing in general. James' vision for the future of testing is very exciting!
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-63641-6
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