Test Management tools provide the structure that keeps test case development, execution, and reporting organized and accurate. The beauty of Test Management is the tool, or system can be used by DevOps, QA, or even development to manage test development, execution, traceability, and organize work.

Test management additionally enables process standardization. For any team, getting processes standardized and repeatable improves team productivity and effectiveness. When collaborating with other groups organization is an essential task, performing and delivering work in an expected manner allows process standardization to enable a smoother workflow. Fewer surprises equals more productive work time with less chaos, interruptions, and missed expectations.

For a QA testing team, test management enables process standardization using a variety of testing techniques, the ability to manage an ever growing number of tests, enable re-usability of tests, make tests visible to other teams, and measure test execution in order to provide accurate and detailed reporting.

Test management makes a big difference to team productivity and management clarity. Granted it takes time to plan how to use the chosen tool and manage the processes, but the end result is worth the work. The time saved using a Test Management tool is well worth the effort to make it part of the team workflow.

Key Takeaways

• What are the advantages of using a Test Management tool?
• Are there any disadvantages of using a Test Management tool?
• How to determine which tool features to use within a QA Test team?
• Discover what options to look for in a Test Management tool.

This guide provides information on the advantages of using  Test Management within a QA testing or DevOps team to keep work organized, visible, accessible, and reported accurately.

What are the Advantages of using a Test Management Tool?

The main advantage of using a Test Management tool is work product organization. Simply being able to find existing test cases for re-use or execution quickly is a time and frustration saver. Organizing tests doesn’t sound difficult until the test suite continues to grow and you’re trying to manually sort, update, and manage hundreds or thousands of test cases.

Keeping the team organized saves time and reduces chaos. It’s essentially the first step towards process standardization. With process standardization, teams use the same test design technique and design tests using the chosen team method.  For example, a QA team may decide to  use their test management tool to create manual exploratory test cases in a story or “tour” style format. Each story or tour focuses on a specific functional area within the application. The test cases are placed in execution order so they follow an end-to-end workflow through the application.

Now, we have a suite of manual exploratory test cases written in a similar, expected manner that allow for testing the entire application from end-to-end or across the system. As more test cases are added, then QA managers or QA staff can easily pick and choose only the tests they want to execute and easily organize them into test suites.

Test suites provide an organized method of test execution status and tracking. Tracking status provides essential data about the test, any defects found by the test, and how often the test gets executed and who executed the test and when. Perfect data for a data based management report easily created by the tool to make test results visible for management and team leaders.

Other advantages of using a Test Management tool include:

• Test case prioritization
• Team or customer collaboration
  • Sharing tests with other teams or customers
• Regulatory compliance tracking and history
• Tracking execution history over time
• Test coverage analysis
• Built-in traceability
• DevOps workflow tracking 
  • Test management tool benefits may be shared with other teams to provide tracking or improve task workflow.
• Ease of reviewability
• Ease of editing

Disadvantages of using a Test Management tool include:

• Setup and implementation time required
• Training for staff
• Strategy planning for how to use the tool most effectively to provide the greatest benefit
• Existing test case migration into the new system

The disadvantages of using a Test Management tool center around the implementation and migration effort. When a substantial  number of tests already exist, it’s sometimes tricky or difficult to import them accurately into a new system.

Test management tools do require spending some time planning what features will be used by the team. Deciding what features to use, and how to configure them to fit your business needs does require time to create an effective approach.

How to Determine Which Tool Features to Use within a QA Test Team?

Determining the features within a test management tool that are useful requires experimentation. Most test management tools have more features than the team may need at first. Consider when determining standard processes how they are reflected in the test management tool.

For example, the team needs traceability to display for meeting regulatory compliance requirements. Let’s assume we are using the qTest test management tool that integrates with JIRA. When the team uses JIRA for task planning, there may be features of qTest that can be configured to display or link to a JIRA task automatically. 

For example, traceability to a JIRA user story or defect task may be configured to display a field that’s pre-populated with the story or task ID of the test, while the test case itself contains the story or task ID from JIRA. Using a specific field for traceability allows for searching or reporting based on the field value.

Perhaps the team benefits the most from organizing tests in a modular fashion for test execution. QA testers can create or manage test execution suites by dragging and dropping test cases into the suite. The modular structure allows for tests to be ordered so that execution occurs as it would in the application’s workflow. In other words, testers can arrange test execution suites based on a modular structure using workflow or by functional area depending on the team's standard process. 

Options that are most useful for a QA test team include:

• Intuitive user interface and user-centered design
• Multiple project support
• Multiple test technique support
• Multiple test design type support for both automated and manual
• Version control for test cases and test suites
• Automatic traceability
• Scheduling of multiple test execution suites
• Customizable reporting that’s easy to use
• Integration with task tracking tools like JIRA, Rally, VersionOne, etc.
• Integration with Grammarly or similar language/spelling checkers
• Ability to migrate existing test cases simply and accurately

Test management tools have multiple advantages including the ability to organize work in a meaningful, useful manner. An organized team is a productive team. When a testing team can quickly locate existing test cases for execution, or for re-use when creating new or additional test cases. Test management tools have a variety of features that help teams standardize processes, meet regulatory requirements, and report accurately with factual data. Determine the options that work for your QA team to eliminate duplicate work and improve productivity, organization, and employee engagement.