With significant excitement we’re announcing the launch of Qmetry 5.2 – the latest version of our premier test management platform.

Qmetry 5.2 includes new features, improvements to existing functionality and bug fixes. All designed to make your test management processes more effective and to make your QA team more productive. Some highlights:

• Support for IE 9 and the Rally Community edition
• Enabling better management of test suites
• Improved support for UTF-8 characters
• New LAMP and XAMP packages
• Improved JIRA plugin
• Enabling better linking to defects to Fogbugz

And tons more!. Don’t want to steal all the engineering thunder here. Check out our detailed release notes

And as always, please provide your feedback as well as ideas for upcoming releases. These are always welcome!

We’ve done this in the past and now we’re reviving our weekly demos for Qmetry.

The idea of this (Free) demo is to give you a guided tour of our flagship test management software. Our skilled team will walk you through some of the salient features of Qmetry:

-> Importing/exporting of test cases,

-> Integrations with defect tracking, requirements gathering and test automation platforms

-> Dashboards, Test Case Coverage and

-> Other cool things that have helped numerous customers make more effective use of their testing resources.

We’re going to be holding this demo twice a week to accommodate the needs of attendees in different geographies. Which is a fancy way of saying that we want you to be fully awake and alert when you show up for the demo.

So, go ahead and register on our website.

We’re happy to announce that we’re presenting at the Atlassian User Group (AUG) on May 10 at the LinkedIn headquarters in the SF Bay Area.

As you might know, our test management platform has several integrations with Atlassian products, most notably with their defect tracking system, JIRA. This bi-directional integration enables users to create test case in Qmetry directly form Jira and by the same token, create defects directly from Qmetry test cases.

I don’t want to steal the present’s thunder by talking more on these integrations . Come by to the event and find out more!

This has been one of the fundamental questions in our industry ever since inception. A recent LinkedIn group discussion was the perfect catalyst to revisit the topic and articulate our views.

QMetry has always believed in a holistic approach to testing – one that integrates all phases of the software life cycle and forms meaningful interactions between these. For example, creating issues directly from test cases and vice-versa. We also strongly believe that test cases should be tied back to requirements – since this would ensure adequate coverage. This also ensures that all requirements have been addressed by a comprehensive suite of test cases.

Comprehensive coverage is a natural way to verify that all of the product requirements have been met by the software. Hence, it is an integral part of our Intelligent Test Management platform. Not just do we measure the extent of coverage but we also tie back defects and bug to the original specification – thereby helping QA and engineering teams become more productive in taking remedial measures. We provide requirement management including support for a requirement backlog used in most agile methodologies like Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban etc. We also integrate with market-leading requirement management platforms like Rally to implement this ability to trace back to original specifications.

We realize that some organizations fight a numbers game- how many tests were run and what is the percentage of pass vs. fail. It always feels great to have 100% Test Cases pass; however, what if the test cases do not cover the requirements adequately?. Always review your requirements and ensure proper coverage.

And THAT constitutes great test management!

We are happy to announce that we will be at the Atlassian Summit, 2012 being held in San Francisco from May 30-June 1.

As you might know, we have a very tight, bi-directional integration with JIRA, Atlassian’s defect tracking software. This integration provides a lot of benefits to our customers:

• Ability to create new defects from within Qmetry
• Ability to create new test case from a JIRA issue
• Add custom JIRA fields in Qmetry
• Integrated Dashboards

And lost more – do find out more on our Integrations page or through this YouTube video

If you’d like to set up a meeting with one of us, please send an email to sales@qmetry.com. We look forward to meeting with you and discussing your test management needs.

Our previous blog post detailed all the cool new features in Qmetry 5.0 – our flagship test management platform.

But it’s not all technical – we have something to make CFO’s happy too! There’s a new pricing model to make it easier for you to choose the edition that best suits your organization’s needs based on the size of the team and details of your testing ecosystem. With these newly-introduced pricing options, we endeavor to find the best feature/price point that will make our test management suite perfect for your organization.

Some finer points in the pricing model:

1. Qmetry is available both in the SaaS and on-premise instances. In both cases, pricing is based on the number of named users you decide to sign up for

2. We count the number of active users only.

3. If desired, we can price based on the number of concurrent users that are accessing the application.

If this is a tad overwhelming, do not worry! We’re just trying to ensure that there is a pricing option that suits your needs. We’re glad to help you – just email us at sales@qmetry.com and someone from our team will get in touch shortly.

We’re happy to announce the launch of Qmetry 5.1! This latest release has something for everyone…

For QA practitioners including current customers, there’s some cool new features to make it even easier for you to execute total test management at your organization. We’re introducing integrations with Rally Software and also improving on existing integrations with Jira and Bugzilla. There’s also an improved UI and the additional capability for displaying and sorting custom fields.

For a detailed document explaining features in this release, please visit our support desk at https://qmetry.zendesk.com/entries/20780161-qmetry-version-5-powerpoint-presentation

Not sure of diving in? Take a 30-day trial and experience it for yourself. We’re confident your QA team will experience significant productivity gains and will love their experience with Qmetry!

Agile is fast emerging as the most widely adopted software development methodology. The advantages (and disadvantages) of using Agile methodologies (for eg Scrum) versus traditional methods like Waterfall are well documented — what is important for teams like ours is the impact this shift has on developing compelling test management platforms.

New development methodologies introduce new challenges to test software – new terminologies, different types of interactions between development and QA teams, etc. The biggest differences, from a testing standpoint, are

• Valuing people over processes and tools
• Emphasis on units of working software versus adherence to comprehensive documentation
• Frequent collaboration with customers
• Quickly responding to changes

I recently read a great blog post that sums up the approach of test driven development as one of the key facets of Agile. That is focus more on getting blocks of software to work in a way the customer has defined them and continuously updating them with status alerts.

And the manifesto for test management platforms is to build tools that enable developers and testers to use Agile frameworks and manage their testing process easily. A lot of our features – integrations with requirements platforms, fostering better collaboration within teams and with customers, and providing maximum flexibility are designed exactly with these goals in mind.

We’ve blogged in the past of the 7 factors important in choosing a test management tool. After numerous interactions with customers and prospects we’re noticing that in addition to these, another very important and critical factor is how quickly a tool can integrate seamlessly with the existing testing infrastructure and processes — essentially, how soon can it “fit into” my organization with minimal disruption to existing operations. Nobody likes change and testing groups are no exception to the rule – the more friction involved in implementing a new tool, the lesser is the adoption and the lower is the ROI.

Our product roadmap is always influenced by the voice of the customer and we always strive to enhance our product to ensure it integrates with existing defect management tools, requirements gathering software, and test automation frameworks at your end. Qmetry is even flexible enough even to handle scenarios where you change processes – for example from an Waterfall development model to the Agile methodology.

And as always, we welcome your ideas. Simply let us know through our support desk.

In one phrase: our Support Desk – visit https://qmetry.zendesk.com and you will find tons of useful information including

Forums – To discuss common issues, best practices etc with fellow Qmetry users
Announcements: Get information on the latest product launches and patches
Video tutorials explaining key capabilities of our test management solution
FAQ’s on how to do all the cool stuff
Installation Guides
Common Issues and their Resolution

You can also submit request and check on the status of your submitted requests. So, come on over and dive right in!