When I first started working on specific adaptations of Ensemble Programming to become Ensemble Testing, I learned that it felt a lot harder to get a good experience on exploratory testing activity than on a programming activity, like test automation creation. When the world of options is completely open, and every single person in the ensemble has their own model of how they test, people need constraints that align them.
An experienced exploratory tester creates constraints - and some even explain their constraints - in the moment to guide the learning that happens. But what about when our testers are not experienced exploratory testers, nor experienced in explaining their thinking?
When we explore alone, we start somewhere, and we call that start of a thread. Every test where we learn creates new options and opportunities, and sometimes we *name a new thread* yet continue on what we were doing, sometimes we *start a new thread*. We build a tree of these threads, choosing which one is active and manage the connections that soon start to resemble a network rather than a tree. This is a model that guides our decisions on what we do next, and when we will say we are done.
The model of threads is a personal thing we hold in our heads. And when we explore together in ensemble testing, we have two options:
- We accept that we have personal models that aren't shared, that could cause friction (hijacking control)
- We create a visual model of our threads
