manual-test-debrief

Overview

The Session-Based Test Management (SBTM) framework ends every session with a PROOF report - a five-section debrief the team can aggregate, compare, and act on. Skip it and the session's findings live only in the tester's head: no team learning, no audit trail, no follow-up. This skill provides the template and the aggregation conventions.

When to use

• After every charter session.
• After a bug bash cohort completes its 90-min slot per bug-bash-facilitator.
• After a free-form tester exploration (even without a formal charter, the PROOF structure converts the session to an artifact).

PROOF format

The acronym from the original Bach & Bach SBTM paper:

Feelings is the load-bearing field teams skip. Keep it - the tester's qualitative judgment is signal no metric captures.

Step 1 - Debrief template

Fill one per session, within 30 min of session end. The blank spine:

# Session debrief - `<session-id>`

**Charter:** [link]   **Tester:** ____   **Date:** ____
**Time-box:** 90 min   **Actual:** ___ min   **Build / Env:** ____

## Past - what was tested
Tours applied (per `exploratory-tours-reference`); areas covered;
notable paths walked.

## Results - what was learned
Confirmed-working items; bugs found (with bug IDs); surprises;
confirmed-fixed vs prior session.

## Outlook - what's left
Areas not covered (out of time / scope); recommended next charter;
open questions for PM / dev.

## Obstacles
Setup pain; environment instability; recommendations for next session.

## Feelings
Quality of attention; confidence in the feature; unease about untested
areas; recommendation to the release manager.

## Time accounting (3-bucket)
| Bucket | Minutes |
|---|--:|
| Test design | __ |
| Setup | __ |
| Bug investigation | __ |
| **Total actual** | __ |

A fully worked example (a promo-code checkout session, every field filled with real bug IDs and time splits) is in references/debrief-examples.md. A high setup % is a signal the environment or test data needs investment, not that the tester is slow.

Step 2 - Aggregation across sessions

Individual debriefs are useful; aggregating them surfaces patterns - which areas are well-covered, which are stale, which have never been touched, and where bugs cluster. Charter authoring uses the rollup to pick where the next session should focus. The Feelings section also yields a per-session quality-of-attention signal worth tracking over time; when it stays low for a tester or area, change something (tester, time-box, tour, or scope). The full quarterly rollup table and the attention tracker are in references/debrief-examples.md.

Anti-patterns

Limitations

• Self-reported. Honesty is load-bearing. A tester who consistently overstates attention quality skews the rollup.
• Time accounting is approximate. The 3-bucket split rounds to the nearest 5 min; that's fine.
• Aggregation is manual. A rollup script can compute coverage % but the action items need a human's call.
• Per-team conventions vary. Some teams add a 6th letter (PROOFS - Stakeholders) for who needs to see the report. Adapt the template per team norms.

References

• Bach, J. & Bach, J., Session-Based Test Management (HP, 2000; PDF at satisfice.com/download/session-based-test-management) - PROOF debrief format origin, three-bucket time accounting.
• Full worked debrief, quarterly rollup, and attention tracker: references/debrief-examples.md.
• exploratory-tours-reference - the tours catalogued in the Past section.
• bug-bash-facilitator - multi-cohort bug bash inherits this debrief format.