Ad Hoc Testing
Ad hoc testing is informal, unscripted testing performed without a documented test case or plan — a tester simply uses the application, trying to break it based on intuition and experience. It's fast and requires no upfront preparation, but is hard to repeat exactly and easy to under-document.
Ad hoc testing works best as a supplement, not a replacement, for structured testing — it catches the odd, unexpected issue a scripted test case would never have thought to check, precisely because it isn't constrained by a predefined script.
It's often confused with exploratory testing, and the line is blurry, but exploratory testing is typically more deliberate — simultaneously learning the system, designing tests, and executing them, often with light note-taking. Ad hoc testing is looser still: closer to just poking around with no structure at all.
