Exploratory Testing and Session Based Test Management

One of the customers we recently signed had a very tight timeframe for release and was relying on our team to help him deliver the product with good quality. There was not much time for Knowledge Transfer and our team was expected to pitch in for day one. I suggested Exploratory Testing to the customer and to measure the effectiveness of ET recommended SBTM(Session Based Test Management).

Being onsite-offshore model i was not sure how SBTM would work since i had this preconceived image that SBTM works only when our team is sitting with the customer's team at their premises. I prepared a SBTM template to share with the customer which had details of the Charter, Test Notes, Bug Investigation and Reporting, Issues, Opportunity Testing, Charter Vs Opportunity etc.

I shared the template for review with my team before presenting it to the customer. The team felt that such a template is too detailed and the customer may not be interested in that level of detailing. We reworked on the template to include details that would be more relevant to the customer such as Bugs Filed during the day, Clarifications raised etc. Except for the Charter most of the other fields were changed. What started as a SBTM report has now become a Daily status report. :-))

My question to other visitors to this blog are:

Is Session Based Test Management possible in onsite-offshore model or pure offshore model? If yes, how to do it effectively?

Can we convince customers about Charter Vs Opportunity Testing?

I understand that ET(Exploratory Testing) can be effectively performed using skilled testers but unfortunately in many cases you don't get that luxury. How to perform ET using a team that is not very skilled?

How do you show product knowledge acquisition as part of ET to the customer?