Exploratory Charter

Session ID: EXP-XXX Tester: Name Date: YYYY-MM-DD Duration: e.g. 90 minutes Feature / Area: Feature name or system area

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Mission

*Complete this sentence: "Explore [area] to discover [risks / questions / unknowns]."*

*Explore [feature] to discover [what could go wrong / what is unknown / what needs verification].*

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Areas to Explore

List the specific areas, flows, and scenarios within scope for this session.

• Area 1 — describe the specific angle
• Area 2 — describe the specific angle
• Area 3 — describe the specific angle

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Ideas and Heuristics

List test ideas and heuristics to guide exploration. Use mnemonics like SFDPOT, CRUD, or FEW HICCUPPS.

• Test idea 1
• Test idea 2
• Test idea 3

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Oracles

What will you compare results against to know if something is wrong?

• Specification / design document
• Previous version behaviour
• Related feature behaviour
• User expectation / common sense

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Out of Scope

What will you NOT explore in this session (to keep focus)?

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Session Notes

Time-boxed notes taken during the session. Record observations, bugs found, questions raised, and coverage achieved.

Time	Observation / Finding
HH:MM	What happened
HH:MM	Bug found — link to ticket

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Debrief Summary

Complete after the session. Summarise what was covered, what was found, and what requires follow-up.

Coverage achieved: What was explored.

Bugs filed: List with ticket IDs.

Risks / open questions: Anything unresolved that needs follow-up.

Recommended next session: What would be most valuable to explore next.

Exploratory Charter

Session ID: EXP-2024-047 Tester: Sasha Koval Date: 2024-03-11 Duration: 90 minutes Feature / Area: Checkout error handling — Novu Bank v3.2 Open Banking payment consent flow

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Mission

Explore the Open Banking payment consent flow to discover how the system behaves when external bank connections are slow, interrupted, or return unexpected error states.

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Areas to Explore

• Happy path with each of the three supported providers (GreenPay, ClearLedger, OpenRoute) — confirming baseline before exploring edges
• Provider timeout: what happens if the redirect back from the provider takes more than 30 seconds
• User abandonment mid-consent: close the browser tab, use the back button, let the session token expire
• Multiple consent attempts: submit the consent flow twice in parallel tabs for the same user
• Partially-authorised state: provider returns success but with a reduced scope
• Error message quality: do error screens give useful guidance or expose internal stack traces

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Ideas and Heuristics

• SFDPOT — Time: What happens at the 30-second provider redirect timeout boundary?
• SFDPOT — Operations: What if the user is on a slow 3G connection during consent?
• CRUD — Delete: Can a user revoke consent mid-flow and immediately re-grant it?
• Error guessing: What if the state parameter in the OAuth callback is tampered with?
• Boundary: Authorise with exactly the minimum account permissions vs. declining one scope
• Comparison oracle: Compare error messages shown to users against the spec in Confluence/NOVU-OPENBANK-ERRORS

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Oracles

• Open Banking consent flow spec: Confluence/NOVU-OPENBANK-SPEC-3.2
• Existing behaviour in v3.1 (no Open Banking, so delta is the entire feature)
• Provider sandbox documentation for error codes and expected redirect behaviours
• UX copy doc: Confluence/NOVU-OPENBANK-UX-COPY

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Out of Scope

• Performance benchmarking (separate perf test scheduled for 2024-03-10)
• Security testing of the OAuth implementation (handled by security team)
• Notification behaviour after successful connection (covered by EXP-2024-045)

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Session Notes

Time	Observation / Finding
10:05	GreenPay happy path — connection succeeds, balance visible within 4s. ✓
10:18	ClearLedger happy path — works. ✓
10:26	OpenRoute happy path — works. ✓
10:35	Simulated 35s delay on GreenPay redirect — app shows spinner indefinitely with no timeout message. Bug filed: NOVU-2041
10:52	Pressed browser back mid-consent (GreenPay) — returned to Novu with a cryptic state_mismatch error. No user-friendly guidance. Bug filed: NOVU-2042
11:08	Two parallel tabs, same consent flow — second tab shows "Connection already in progress" which is reasonable. No data corruption observed. ✓
11:20	Partial scope (declined transaction history permission) — app shows "Partial connection" with a clear explanation. ✓
11:31	Tampered state parameter — app correctly rejects with "Invalid request." No stack trace exposed. ✓

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Debrief Summary

Coverage achieved: All three providers on happy path; timeout behaviour; mid-flow abandonment (back button and tab close); parallel sessions; partial scope; tampered OAuth state.

Bugs filed:

• NOVU-2041 — Open Banking: no timeout message when provider redirect exceeds 30s (Severity: High)
• NOVU-2042 — Open Banking: "state_mismatch" error on back-button is not user-friendly (Severity: Medium)

Risks / open questions:

• What happens when the user's bank session expires mid-redirect? No way to simulate this with current sandbox — raised with Dev (Ayo Adeyemi) to clarify.
• Tab-close abandonment leaves an orphan token in the database — confirmed with Dev as expected; token expires after 15 minutes.

Recommended next session: Explore the notifications centre push delivery flow with airline-mode device and background app state. Assign to Marcus Obi (EXP-2024-048).