Author: Bill Echlin

Introduction In our test management tool side-by-side feature comparison we identified well over 100 features that you can use to compare the different tools. Not all of the features are significant though. In this review we pick a few of those features and take a look looking at how Zephyr Scale addresses 7 complexities of test management. Those complexities and core features are: Assignment Version Control Parameterisation Libraries Results Aggregation Retesting Configurations and Releases Assignment Test cases are executed in cycles within Zephyr Scale. The cycle has an owner at the top level. Then you can assign individual test cases can to specific testers for execution. This is also supported with an 'Executed by' field that shows who actually ran...

Introduction The functional analysis of test management tools can be broken down into more than 100 separate features. In fact, our our side-by-side test management tool feature comparison has identified well over 100 features. Having lots of features isn’t always a good thing. Let’s face it not all of them are significant. However, there are 7 core and complex features that every test management solution has to address in one way or another. The core features are: Assignment Version Control Parameterization Libraries Results Aggregation Retesting Configurations and Releases In this write-up, we’ll be seeing how Xray stands up to the 7 criteria listed above. Assignment Xray implements test cases as Jira issue types. When you start out with Xray, you...

Introduction QMetry is a test management tool that enables users to increase efficiency in managing their testing. Yes it delivers the basics of creating test cases but QMetry also has some clever ways to help with test case reuse.There are lots of aspects to a test management solution and our side-by-side test management tool feature comparison has identified more than 100 of them. However, there are 7 core and complex features that every test management solution must address in some way. The 7 core and complex features are: Assignment Version Control Libraries Results Aggregation Retesting Configurations and Releases In the following sections we look at how QMetry addresses each of these 7 features. Assignment The two ways to assign tests in...

Sometimes it’s worth revisiting the basics. Some things you think you know, then when you scratch the surface you realise you didn’t know them quite as well as you thought you did. That’s how it was when I started looking at the fundamentals of REST API’s. I’ve been testing REST API’s for years but I didn’t really know what REST stood for. Do you? There might be 6 architectural principles defining REST (more on those later) but the fundamentals come down to just two things. Funnily enough those two things are highlighted in the name, REST.  REpresentational and  State Transfer Each of these concpets is introduced the following short video:  In short then, Representational means that it should be...

In our series on Test Automation at scale, our first session looks at the architecture of a data driven automation framework running GUI front end tests across large numbers of client machines. We walk you through the architecture of a system that minimises script and code complexity. A system that increases reliability and speeds up test execution.  Critical in this setup is the concept of test case execution isolation. The concept of making sure that each test is run in isolation so that one failure doesn’t cause the whole test run to collapse. With the execution of each test isolated it’s easier to identify and investigate failures. This also makes it easier to scale, as more scenarios and more...

Custom Dashboards and Filters There’s no point putting all this data in and organising everything if you can’t see where you’re up to on your projects. Jira provides you with dashboards that can be customized to your requirements and filters you can setup and save. Both dashboards and filters allow you to see exactly where you are with your particular project. The start of all this is then is the System Dashboard. This is the dashboard you’re presented with when you log in and when you select the ‘View System Dashboard’ option. Each dashboard is just a one page container for a number of gadgets. Where a gadget is a panel that displays a particular set of informations. Some dashboards...

Versions & Components The other major features in Jira that lets us group and categorise our issues are Versions and Components. Both of these features provide us with useful ways to visualise the status of our projects and the work/issues that we need to be focusing on. Each Project you define in Jira can contain many ‘Versions’ and many ‘Components’. Before we look at what Versions and Components are though lets just recap on what a project is. A project in Jira is just a container for a lot of issues. It’s the top level container. Every issue must be assigned to one (and only one) project. With a project we can also create Component and Version identifiers. The issues...

Workflow & Status If you’re looking at tracking work tasks the simplest way of categorising the pieces of work you have is with a few simple status values like ‘To Do’, ‘In Progres’ and ‘Done’. In Jira terms you’d have your issues tracking those pieces of work. Each issue then would be set with a status value of ‘To Do’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Done’. When you haven’t yet started a piece of work the status is set to ‘To Do’ on the issue. When you pick up the piece of work and start working on it you move the status value for the related issue to ‘In Progress’. And obviously once you’ve finished the work you move the status value...

Lables and Priorities In the last module we saw how to create and structue our Jira Projects. In this module our objective is to understand why we need labels and priorities. We’ll also look at setting project priority values and label values. Finally we’ll see how we can search for issues based on labels and make bulk updates to our Jira issues.  Why Do We Need Labels and Priorities? There are two other properties of an issue that will help you organise and track your issues. One is the ability to give an issue a priority category. The other is to give your issues one or more labels. Assigning lables and priorities helps you look, for example, for all...

We’ve looked what an issue is in Jira and how to create them. It’s great to be able to track our work as issues in Jira but the real power comes from Jira’s ability to group, organize and categorize these issues. When you start to get into 100’s, 1000’s or even 10,000’s of an issue the ability to focus just the issues you need becomes absolutely critical. Each Jira issue records a number of key pieces of information that allow us to categorize the issues. Those pieces of information can include the following: Project Components Releases Priority Status Labels Assignment So, for example, you might have an issue that is part of a particular software project, that is related to...