At the heart of Test Management lie organization, planning, authoring, execution, and reporting. In the contemporary times where teams are geographically distributed, operating in different time zones and functioning collaboratively - working on multiple projects & different modules, testing in tandem with various other tools, it is totally inhuman to ask the testing team to sit and draft the statistically representable and comprehendible status summary by the end of the day, for their higher ups for their perusal.

Reporting is a very vital feature of a test management tool which enables the testing team to focus on what they are best at – Testing! The gratuitous efforts spend on summarizing the status report and making them presentable can be eliminated by an efficient reporting facility provided in a test management tool.

Reporting comprises mainly of graphically summarized information as well as detailed reports which are either replicas of are Excel/word/pdf.

A good reporting system should provide:

The Dashboards: graphical summary of the statistics

• Information in an easy to use/comprehend format
• Should exhibit live/dynamically updated data
• Should show data/stats on mouse over
• Graphs/chart in relevant structure (for e.g):
  • Pie chart for distribution
  • Bar charts for comparison
  • Line graphs for timeline comparison

• Ability to view the information/metrics in the desired format – graphical/tabular
• Complete drill down to fetch the information/data lying behind the graph on a click of a button on the graph
• Ability to remember the charts most frequently visited
• Metrics that can be downloaded and distributed to the team members/managers
• Base to pull out multiple charts at one time for comparison of information across parameters i.e. timelines/components/team members working on it etc.

Reports: detailed information viewed/downloaded for reference:

• Should be viewable/downloadable in desired format (xls, rtf, pdf)
• Should provide an interface to modify/ write commands to pull out any relevant/required information from the tool for reporting purposes
• Should be easy to use and maintain

So, the bottom line is that, the reporting should be so easy that even our Managers should be able to get it and comprehend it.

At QMetry we have kept the reporting very SIMPLE to use, Easy to comprehend and Flexible to customize.

Uncategorized Dashboard, QA, Quality Assurance, Reports, test management, Testing

As testing is a science in itself and the activities involved within testing are always never-ending (recursive), outsourcing these activities not only reduces the burden of the organizations developing software but also guarantees a much reliable and quality software in affordable way; this reliability is achieved due to the disciplined approach and well defined/ designed test activity plans done by professional independent testing companies.

According to the Gartner Research Report, ‘Market Trends: Application Development, Worldwide, 2008-2013’, the global software testing market equals $13 billion and the global market size of outsourced QA & Testing services is around $6.1 billion. Analysts from Gartner believe that the appeal of QA & Testing outsourcing will be increased in the near future due to the companies ‘understanding that offshore services are a valuable tool in leveraging testers’ expertise, tools and processes and reducing the cost of testing, while improving the overall application quality.

Why outsourcing?

Current Issues: 

1.       Insufficient time: This is a major issue that every organization faces during entire development process of any software application. Tight deadlines in delivering the product (which need to be strictly followed), many times become a crucial player in dropping testing activity or winding it up in a shorter time.

2.       Unskilled Manpower: Another major impacting factor is the unavailability of proper and skilled resources, which usually results when testing is not planned properly and no proper testing cycle is implemented or not at all considered.

3.       Limited budget: Budget is also one of the major factors that sometimes affect the software development cycle which limits the testing cycles to one or two. Insufficient budget margins not only limits the testing activities but also limits the testing types/ phases needed based on the software application, which if bypassed may result in huge impact on the overall quality.

4.       Lack of focus consideration: Organizations which develop complete software (right from initiation till closure) are involved in many activities; various phases are to be considered during this entire process in strict time frames, thus the focus is diverse with major focus on development and completion of the tasks (which are back to back) as earlier as possible which many times deviates the focus of testing leaving it unattained. 

Benefits: 

1.       Focus on core competency: Most of the outsourcing firms are involved in to the same kind of activities i.e., testing, thus, developing a good and competent resource is not a challenge and is many times readily available.

2.       Better output due to activity outsourced to the firm specializing in the same domain: As most of the outsourcing organizations are specialized in specific domains and technologies and focus on particular fields, choosing a right outsourcing partner based on the core competencies always result in huge gains.

3.       Marginally less investment cost: As outsourcing do not involve much investment like, resource management cost, cost for planning, infrastructure, etc. it is much cheaper and cost effective and can be achieved in much less investment as compared to the investment required in deploying an in-house testing activity. Also, there is no maintenance cost required if the task is outsourced.

4.       Optimum time, task and resource management with higher productivity: The outsourcing firms with their expertise in specific domains and on particular technologies and testing activities can manage tasks and resources in much better manner by optimum time utilization as the major focus and goal is to deliver quality product with reliable and stable service to their clients.

5.       Stronger risk assessment and management: With testing becoming as major and prime task for outsourcing organizations it gives deep focus on the major impacts, potential risks and other quality hazards due to regular work and the previous experience, this helps the outsourcing firms in much better way to manage risks and plan the activities based on the risks involved and their priority. This also leads to well planned risk mitigation management and avoiding potential risks. 

Outsourcing is just not a business partnership but also collaboration for transformation towards mutual growth which, can also lead a dying/ failing business to a leading business (leader) because of its numerous hidden advantages (value-adds). Thus, in today’s competitive market moving to outsourcing is call of the hour, a wise decision!

Uncategorized outsourcing, Outsourcing testing, test management, Testing

What is Test Automation?

 Test automation is the use of software to control the execution of tests, the comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes, the setting up of test preconditions, and other test control and test reporting functions. Commonly, test automation involves automating a manual process already in place that uses a formalized testing process.

 Testing tools can help automate tasks such as product installation, test data creation, GUI interaction, problem detection, defect logging, etc.

 Test Automation requires appropriate planning i.e. which tests we have to automate and which we have to perform manually. Also, test automation is implemented where the functionality is stable in the application over volatile ones.

 Benefits of Test Automation: 

1. Fast: Time duration of the testing process will reduce drastically since testing is a repetitive activity throughout the development cycle.
2. Reliable: Accuracy of the testing will be high in automation testing than manual testing.
3. Repeatable: can test how the software reacts under repeated execution of the same operations.
4. Comprehensive: Effectiveness of the application will be improved and can rerun the scripts across multiple platforms simultaneously.
5. Reusable: creates scripts for reusable tests that can be run each time the site or application changes
6. Cost Effective: Total cost of performing manual testing is exorbitant in comparison to automated testing. By executing automation scripts the rate of error will be less than manual testing and it can execute the tests much faster.
7. Improves Quality: By repeatedly executing the automated scripts, more defects can be found and further improvement of the quality of end product can be done .With Automation we can run more tests in less time with fewer resources. 

Type of Test Automation Approach:

There are two general approaches to test automation:

• Graphical user interface testing: A testing framework generates user interface events and observes the changes that result in the user interface, to validate that the observable behavior of the program is correct.
  Many test automation tools provide record and playback features that allow users to record interactively user actions and replay it back any number of times, comparing actual results to those expected. The advantage of this approach is that it requires little or no software development..

• Code-driven testing: The public (usually) interface to classes, modules, or libraries are tested with a variety of input arguments to validate that the results that are returned are correct. Code-driven testing allows the code to conduct unit tests to determine whether various sections of the code are acting as expected under various circumstances. Test cases describe tests that need to be run on the program to verify that the program runs as expected.

 Integration of Test Automation Tool and Test Management Tool:

 In the test management tool, we have an entry of automated Testcases so we can integrate it with the test automation tool. Automated Testcases will be automatically executed and their result will be compared with the expected result in the test management tool.

Also, the actual result and status will get updated automatically in the test management tool. By using Test Automation tool, we can send the acknowledgment mail with the automated Testcases status to the QA persons.

 References:

http://www.wikipedia.org/

Uncategorized Automation benefits, QMetry, Quality, Test Automation, Test Management Tools, Testing

• Affordable Total Cost of Ownership: Low upfront cost for acquisition and deployment, elimination of non-licensing costs and a metered-usage-based payment model with monthly expenses spread out over time reduces the overall cost of ownership. The Subscription based pricing enables economies of scale and makes the expenses more manageable as the teams grows. More importantly, for the SaaS based applications, the provider is responsible for the resources required to run the application & maintenance, which helps to optimize customer’s resources for other tasks. The user gets access to the application by paying for the usage and not owning it.

• Faster deployment and high acceptance: The deployment time for a SaaS based application is faster since it is devoid of the complex implementation tasks associated with the licensed software as it is already up and running on the vendor’s resources. Since these applications are hosted over the internet, no training is required and the adoption levels are high.

• Effortless real time upgrades and updates: A SaaS provider takes care of all the updates and upgrades, which are automatic, seamless and offered at no additional cost, there are consistent smaller changes instead of monster patches that cost time and money to implement. This aids the users to benefit from innovations on an on-going basis with painless upgrades.

• Greater Customization and Scalability: The multitenancy feature of SaaS applications enables the vendors to scale indefinitely and provide exhaustive customization capability.

• Seamless Integration: Integration support was aimed at collaborating with the complementary service providers & business partners of SaaS solutions. This was then extended to imbibe adaptability to the current processes and applications at the customer’s premise. Seamless integration is provided through different web services APIs and Service Oriented Architectures.

• Anytime Anywhere: Today, the teams are geographically distributed and hence real-time collaboration between the team members is the need of the hour. Centralized repository provides a transparent & continuous view of the modifications/updates to the entire team. The mere inherent feature of being hosted over the internet enables the users to use the service from any location.

• Focus to core competencies:  Due to higher accountability on part of the SaaS solution providers in terms of maintaining reliable data centers and secure processes, the customer can divert the resources utilized for the same towards competency building and hence, bringing higher productivity to the business.

Economic factors favor SaaS as during these tough times, capital expenditures are bound to be slashed and force organizations to move to more economical options. The subscription based pricing model of pay-as-you-go, will make SaaS more attractive and affordable. The lower overall TCO and enhanced productivity due to increased focus on core competency makes SaaS favorable.

Uncategorized QMetry, Quality, SaaS, Software as a Service, Testing