Comparing a Hybrid Testing Process with Scripted and Exploratory Testing: An Experimental Study with Practitioners

This study presents an experimental study comparing the testing quality of a Hybrid Testing (HT) process with the commonly used approaches in industry: Scripted Testing (ST) and Exploratory Testing (ET). The study was conducted in an international IT service company in Sweden with the involvement of six experienced testers. Two measures were used for comparison: 1) defect detection effectiveness (DDE) and 2) functionality coverage (FC). The results indicated that HT performed better in terms of DDE than ST and worse than ET. In terms of FC, HT performed better than ET, while no significant differences were observed between the HT and ST. Furthermore, HT performed best for experienced testers, but worse with less experienced testers.