Exploratory testing in agile environments

In era of rapid development of agile software project, testing is totally changed to a new way from typical scripted method. The exploratory testing here can help in this scenario for tester(new in project) to meet with the expectations regards application quality and robustness. Here in this article I will try to explore the term exploratory testing and the cases where it can be fit in agile software development and what will be the benefit using this.
I read many article and white papers and found that the term exploratory testing is used equivalent to ad hoc testing. I fed up. I am not agree with this. there Once a guy asked me that 'is exploratory testing and ad hoc testing is same?' My answer was very simple.
"It depends on you , if you think an ad hoc testing is a very rough and thought less testing then I would say that no, exploratory testing and ad hoc testing are not same ". Guys please make it clear, I am using exploratory testing here is not like this. Exploratory Testing is always done with the intent of understanding the functionality of the application

In Agile software project when a new tester join the project, I would suggest to do this testing . This will help him to perform testing and getting familiar with application. What bad in this? Unlike traditional test methods where there are certain process , exploratory testing is more of a real-time process. Tell me one thing...Is this practical possible to adopt a scripted testing in agile development. I hope most of you will say NO. so what? We can say it is better way for a tester to get familiar with application parallel to their testing activities, to follow the exploratory testing. It is also true most of the testers follow this at least once or later this approach in their project testing but the problem they never go with its definition and a proper way.

I have been working in a project which used the agile development method and I am working as a lead QA off shore for that project. I always asked my colleague to explore the application using exploratory testing.
To deal with the constant changes on an agile project, testers need to understand which risks are important to the project , team and should focus on what is going to be changed and to be done in project. We generally gone through the scrum meeting to discuss the work plan and work which is done last and what to be done in next.
In my project I separately do regular meeting to discuss my test scenarios with whole team to find the gaps and to make them clear.

Agile project have their own challenges to the testing team like- Unclear project scope, iteration, Minimal Documentation, early and frequent testing. all these demand diverse and special skills testing guys. So one of the skill 'exploratory testing' is important here. This will cover, exploration od application, touring the application through GUI, analyzing the product/application ect..

Any way, the article was intended to discuss on exploratory testing so I will take an another separate note to explore my experience on my process of doing the testing in agile software project.

So now lets discuss the merits and demerits of Exploratory Testing. I will cover this section pointing out questions and then the appropriate answers:
Why Exploratory Testing (I wil use ET now onward for this)? - ET is much more capable to find those bugs which can not be found in scripted testing approach this means ET extend our test coverage which we generally prepared using specification. here the question may be that why we miss such bugs in our scripted method. So as specification is intended to a specific s/w behavior so the change to miss some scenarios which may produce some untouched bugs which can be found in ET.

Is ET is simliar to Ahdoc testing? As I pointed this issue earlier in this post only, the answer can be YES or NO depends on the person and his understanding on this. One more thing i want to point here that adhoc testing can be done by any one . but for ET the person should be more skilled.