A poorly managed testing phase and quality assurance process are akin to a nightmare for any company. Issues in quality assurance practices, especially with regards to verification and testing, can cause serious hazards to befall the company. This is why a test case management software is a prerequisite for seamless and defect-free software application development. An effective test case management approach provides an integrated management environment, which enables the quality assurance team to generate and manage not only the test case but the overall test plan as well. It also offers a systematic and structured approach for managing test cases while still being flexible and versatile enough to sync well with any kind of methodology.
The real-time comprehensive reports for the progress and status of the activities of the test cases comprises of visual graphs and statistics which creates a platform for the teams to establish a shared language and common knowledge. It also outlines the schedule of the project and makes sure that it is still on track. In addition to that, the requirements for test cases becomes very challenging for the teams to manage in a test environment. More often than not, a key resource or an important piece of information is lack and not available for use which curtails the efforts of the team members. However, with the right test case management software, they can allot various test requirements to the relevant individual test cases which makes traceability easier and allows for more effective resource management and allocation.
Test Case Management Solutions for the Agile Testing Methodologies
As more and more companies are moving towards agile and DevOps methodologies, the role of automation in test case management becomes increasingly significant. Parallel to the growth of the project and its scope, the number of user stories and test cases continues to increase with each sequential sprint, and this, in turn, becomes essentially unmanageable through manual processes. The automated test case management facilitates the project managers and their teams to organize all their test cases in logical groups and match them with relevant issues and resources. The comprehensive and versatile features of this system ascertain that they can define and classify the test case in accordance with their respective severity and priority. It also highlights the assumptions, pre and post conditions, along with the appropriate steps to reproduce the test cases.
The issue tracker integration with test case management is one of the most important aspects of this solution in an agile environment as tickets and bug notifications are automatically generated every time there is an issue with test cases or in case they fail altogether. The user friendly and interactive interface of these tools simplifies the testing process so that teams across the organization can enhance their verification and testing approach right away and they can hit the ground running. The communication gaps between the teams are bridged with the help of this tool, and the management of test plans, test requirements, test cases, and test runs can be conducted in one place. Fewer limitations for the users and shared access to the central repository means that overall collaboration efforts and teamwork is improved. Furthermore, the visual representation of results, activity feeds, and interactive dashboards allows the teams to instantly check the status and results of the test case execution, and supports then in analysis and deriving actionable insights.
Using the test case management solutions would assist the managers to evaluate reports and to gauge if the program deviates from its specifications and requirements. The workload of the quality assurance team becomes more manageable if they allocate certain test sets to specific quality assurance tester during the test execution process. The workflow capabilities of the test case management solution enable it to review the completion status and overall progress of the software testing phase. The results for the test cases (failed or passed) appear on the screen automatically for all requirements and specifications of all aspects which allows better visibility and quick reviews.
Implementation of test cases cannot be carried out in a vacuum. Given that it is an important part of the software development lifecycle and has a direct impact on the outcome of the project, it should be linked with prerequisites and issues. Automated test case management tools offer the benefit of traceability of the issues and other variables directly to test cases, that paves the way for testers to meticulously monitor and keep track of all activities.
