Author: Bill Echlin

Re-running tests to check that bugs are fixed is an essential part of the test management process. Teams grow, the amount of data generated by completed testcases increases and the number of raised defects expands too. As a result it becomes more difficult to keep track of the retesting. There are several different ways to approach this. Firstly we can identify all failed cases from a previous cycle and just re run those testcases. This approach has one serious flaw in that defects raised outside of the QA effort don’t then get retested. Having said that this is the simplest approach to execute. We talk more about this approach in practice in this managing retests blog post. The second approach...

In many cases we’ll need our test management tool to aggregate and report on results from various perspectives. For example we may need to aggregate across different projects, application modules, runs or cycles. Whilst this sounds simple in theory, it’s not always so simple in practice. Much depends on how you structure things within your test management tool and how well that tool can cope with aggregating results. Another area of complexity can develop when you want to see what the last run status values are for a group of tests across different releases or builds of a product. We argue against The Aggregated Test Management Results Report in this post. However there are times when this can be useful....

Your ability to manage a library of testcases in your test management tool depends a lot on the relationship between the different instances of the testcases. The instances that resides in the library and the instances that are created to be executed and run. At a basic level you you will have two instances of a testcase.. 1. The instance that resides in the library. This is the master copy of the testcase and will not usually have a result record associated with it. 2. The instances that have been used at run/execution time. These instances will all have a result (pass, fail, not yet run, etc) value against them. They may differ from the instance that resides in the...

The ability to add parameters to testcases enables you to write testcases once and then run different instances multiple times with different parameters. It’s a key capability in test management that saves time, enables you scale up your testing more efficiently and helps avoid mistakes when writing repetitive testcases. It does add a degree of complexity to your test management process though. Managing large volumes of parameter data can become difficult. Sharing parameters across different test cases is not straightforward. And the point at which you define the parameters (e.g. at run time) can be critical to the success of this approach. With QAComplete we’re going to see how to create parameters in testcases, how we define the parameters and...

It’s important to understand if and how version control of your QA artifacts is relevant to your test management process. If you work in a highly regulated environment then it likely that version control is very important. If you work in an environment where documentation and traceability aren’t so important then this may not be so relevant. Either way it’s useful to trace the history and modifications to your test artifacts. As most tools will do this for you in the background it’s usually worth starting off with tracking the history of changes at first. To understand the different approaches to version control read this previous blog post on the Three Approaches to Test Case Management Version Control. So at...

All test management tools have the concept of assigning testcases. Some provide more capabilities than others. Certain tools provide just about every capability you can imagine but do this with a level of complexity which can be quite difficult to manage. Others have limitations that may or may not impact your ability to implement the process you need. In this article we look in detail at how your test management tool implements assignment at the set, case and step level. Key points you should consider in regards to how a test management tool implements the concepts of assignment are: At which level do I want to carry out assignment (e.g. step, case and set). Do I need to be able...

Over the next seven weeks we’re going to take a look in detail at 7 complex aspects of test management. We’re going to look at how we can address these complexities with some of the common tools available today. In doing so we’ll explore some of the weaknesses and strengths of popular tools and see how best to set them up to overcome these issues. In short we’re looking to help guide you on the best way to implement your chosen test management tool so that it better supports your process. In this series of weekly blog posts we’re going to examine the following… 1. Assignments: Assignment of Test Cases in Test Management Tools At some point in the process...

Successful test management is about improving processes, technology and teams. However, if you don’t keep your eye on the end goal it’s easy to spend time and effort improving these areas yet see little difference in the quality of products you’re working on. And that’s the key. Any improvement efforts need to be targeted towards delivering an improvement in the quality of the products you are testing. Too many projects fail to deliver those improvements because they lose sight of this. The following 7 rules will help you focus on delivering a successful test management solution. Rule 1: Focus on the Product Quality Goal This is all ultimately about improving product quality. It’s not about technology. Improving tracking, reporting and...

Retesting is a key part of the test management process. However, there is a right and a wrong way to approach this. You run some testcases as part of one cycle. Some fail and you look to run them again as part of the next cycle. When they pass the temptation is to go back to the original testcase record and change the result to a pass. This is especially true where there was just a small fix or config change required to resolve the issue. This is the wrong way to approach this. It’s imperative as part of the test management cycle to make sure each execution is tracked and recorded independently. The scenario is this. 1. You execute...

There are a number of core test management activities that you will be performing as part of any QA process.  What we cover here is good software testing practice and should form the bedrock of any QA teams setup.  The activities we’ll look at are : Test Management Activities 1. Developing testcases in a library. 2. Defining releases and configurations that we’ll use during the execution. 3. Grouping into sets ready for execution. 4. Execution. In this discussion we’re going to look specifically at carrying out those activities with QAComplete. With QAComplete we’ll see how we can streamline this approach. We’ll see how this can improve on the process that we’d normally see with an excel based approach. The first part...