Exploratory testing as a source of testing technical debt

Among the several attempts to reduce such costs, automated software testing deserves a special mention [S3]. Automated software testing provides quick verification and reduces the testing execution effort but it requires a significant upfront investment to set up the infrastructure. The alternative, i.e. manual testing, is very labor intensive and requires human testers to execute the tests, e.g. test case based testing and exploratory testing. Despite the potentially higher costs, the latter approach is more common in industry compared to the former [S4].