Author: Bill Echlin

Choosing a test management solution is easy. Implementing a solution is hard. It’s easy to select and configure one of the many great test management applications on the market today. We all understand the technology, the features are easy to evaluate and the configuration easy to set up (perhaps with a bit of trial and error). Implementation is a different ball game though. Getting your QA team to use the application can be difficult. Getting them to use it consistently can be almost impossible. Yet the success or failure of your chosen solution depends mainly on how the whole of your team interact with the tools you provide them with. Business objective clarity – the test management tool you select...

We all know that there’s never enough time to execute all of the testcases defined in our test management system. You can’t do everything when you’ve only got a finite amount of time. For this reason experts always seem to recommend prioritising your testing. Whilst prioritising seems like the obvious thing to do, the concept of de-prioritising is never quite as obvious. Some refer to this idea of de-prioritising as setting posteriorities. This is the concept of picking tasks that you consciously put at the bottom of your list. Tasks you plan to do later and which you may not even start. Essentially though the goal is to free you and your team up so that you can focus on...

Part of an effective QA cycle depends on an efficient test management process. In this webinar we look at ways to allocate work to your team using Software Planner and the ways in which you can analyse how your QA cycle is progressing. Controlling time effectively will allow you to make the most of your resources, whilst a greater awareness of the test status will help you to meet your targets. With the right project management tools you can keep up to date on your project’s progress. As noted in previous webinars, Software Planner is able to keep track of many aspects of your testing artifacts, including your software requirements, test cases, and defect data. The project tools can be...

There are some interesting comparisons between Octopuses and Test Management. For starters did you know that an octopus doesn’t have eight arms? Turns out that it has six arms and two legs (How Many Arms Does an Octopus Have?). Either way that’s a lot of limbs to manage. The management of the test process presents most of us with a similar challenge. The concepts behind test management are simple. Think up a test case, define the steps, write down the expected results, execute and log the result. It all boils down to this. The larger the product we’re testing the more we need to create. You couldn’t wish for simpler foundation. Simple is great, especially in the software development arena...

In this test management webinar recording we look at how to schedule automated tests to run daily during the QA cycle. Automating the execution of your testing and tracking those results in conjunction with your manual test efforts is key to maximising your resources. Integrating this process into an automated build process brings even more benefits with initiation of the automation coming from the completion of the build. With effective reporting and dashboards you can push back on development teams that deliver poorly unit tested builds to your QA team. Taking this approach is a good way to free up your team to concentrate on what is really important; usually the testing of new features not undertaking the unit testing...

When it’s time to start planning your manual test efforts, being thorough in your preparation is the best way to ensure success. The most efficient way to begin developing your cases is to have your projects organized with test management planning tools such as Software Planner and TestComplete. These tools can help keep your tests organized, are easy to use, and require little in the way of maintenance. Once you’ve got your projects organized into separate automation and manual folders within the software’s library, you can start creating and executing your manual tests. The key to planning successful manual execution is to develop requirements that are descriptive enough to include enough information for testers and programmers. Such requirements leave out...

When implemented well, automated testing can save a significant amount of time and money. The key is to start your planning with something small, and with tests that offer a high return on investment. A good example of this is the smoke tests run by the team to check that the latest build meets a minimum standard. Assuming these automated smoke tests pass then the release can be accepted by the QA team. Since these types of tests need to be run frequently they make good candidates for automation and should be factored into your planning efforts. Building up a breadth of these smokes tests can then help you develop up a very effective regression suite. Planning the development of...