What is actual testing process in practical or company environment?

Today I got  interesting question from reader, How testing is carried out in company i.e in practical environment? Those who get just out of college and start for searching the jobs have this curiosity,  How would be the actual working environment in the companies?
Here I focus on software Testing actual working process in the companies. As of now I got good experience of software testing career and day to day testing activities.  So I will try to share more practically rather than theoretically.
Whenever we get any new project there is initial project familiarity meeting. In this meeting we basically discuss on who is client? what is project duration and when is delivery? Who is involved in project i.e manager, Tech leads, QA leads, developers, testers etc etc..?
From the SRS (software requirement specification) project plan is developed. The responsibility of testers is to create software test plan from this SRS and project plan. Developers start coding from the design. The project work is devided into different modules and these project modules are distributed among the developers. In meantime testers responsibility is to create test scenario and write test cases according to assigned modules. We try to cover almost all the functional test cases from SRS.  The data can be maintained manually in some excel test case templates or bug tracking tools.
When developers finish individual modules, those modules are assigned to testers.  Smoke testing is performed on these modules and if they fail this test, modules are reassigned to respective developers for fix. For passed modules manual testing is carried out from the written test cases. If any bug is found that get assigned to module developer and  get logged in bug tracking tool. On bug fix tester do bug verification and regression testing of all related modules. If bug passes the verification it is marked as verified and marked as closed. Otherwise above mentioned bug cycle gets repeated.(I will cover bug life cycle in other post)
Different tests are performed on individual modules and integration testing on module integration. These tests includes Compatibility testing i.e testing application on different hardware, OS versions,  software platform, different browsers etc. Load and stress testing is also carried out according to SRS. Finally system testing is performed by creating virtual client environment. On passing all the test cases test report is prepared and decision is taken to release the product!
So this was a brief outline of process of project life cycle.
Here is detail of each step what testing exactly carried out in each software quality and testing life cycle specified by IEEE and ISO standards:

Review of the software requirement specifications
Objectives is set for the Major releases
Target Date planned for the Releases
Detailed Project Plan is build. This includes the decision on Design Specifications
Develop Test Plan based on Design Specifications
Test Plan : This includes Objectives, Methodology adopted while testing, Features to
be tested and not to be tested, risk criteria, testing schedule, multi-
platform support and the resource allocation for testing.
Test Specifications
This document includes technical details ( Software requirements )
required prior to the testing.
Writing of Test Cases
Smoke(BVT) test cases
Sanity Test cases
Regression Test Cases
Negative Test Cases
Extended Test Cases
Development – Modules developed one by one
Installers Binding: Installers are build around the individual product.
Build procedure :
A build includes Installers of the available products – multiple platforms.
Testing
Smoke Test (BVT)  Basic application test to take decision on further testing
Testing of new features
Cross-platform testing
Stress testing and memory leakage testing.
Bug Reporting
Bug report is created
Development – Code freezing
No more new features are added at this point.
Testing
Builds and regression testing.
Decision to release the product
Post-release Scenario for further objectives.

HP Quality Center Tutorial (Day 7) – Project Analysis Using the Powerful Dashboard Tools

Here we are at the end of the QC series. If you are here for the first time, I highly recommend you to go through all the Quality center tutorials published as of now. I’m sure after reading these tutorials you should be able to start using this tool on your live projects. You can also recommend it to management team for evaluation if you are thinking to introduce a test management tool on your project.
This last topic will help you use the inbuilt analysis feature of Quality Center in a way that reduces a lot of work on the tester or test manager’s end to explicitly record, collect and understand the data related to the entire QA process.

Quality Center Dashboard:

The analysis feature in HP ALM/QC is so robust and extensive that I believe this is what makes many companies or projects to go for it. Nobody wants to go deeper into their projects without knowing how far you have come and how much longer you need to keep going or if you need to keep going at all. ALM provides excellent insights into this.
There are many graphs that are readily available and if that does not work for you, you can always define what you would like to view.
Apart from the graphs, ALM can generate Excel reports and Project reports for you.
QC Dashboard has the following 2 components:
1) Analysis View
2) Dashboard View
Let’s discuss these components in detail:

1) Analysis View module:

Contains the analysis tree in which you organize all your analysis items.
There are two tabs to this view.

• Analysis View
• Analysis Menu

Tab #1) Analysis View:
You can use the “Graph Wizard” that will guide you to add the graph or you can add a custom graph.
a) Using the “Graph Wizard”:
Choose the following option

Choose the graph type:

Choose Entity:

Choose Project:

Choose filter:

Select graph attributes and click “Finish”

The graph gets generated and you will have an option to add it to the analysis tree.

b) Custom Graph:
Here you can create graphs and reports that are custom to your project. To do so, you can create a folder. Under the folder you have an option to create the following:

Choose the relevant option. I am going to go with “New Graph”. The following dialog opens up:

Under Entity, you have the following option and depending on the entity you choose, the graph type field is populated.

For example, for defects, these are the options:

I am going to leave the default values as is and choose the graph name as “Test” and click ok.
As you can see, “test” graph is added under the folder. I can now configure the values as I wish and view the graph.

Tab #2) Analysis Menu:
This second tab to the analysis view has a lot of inbuilt reports based on each side bar menu item. Choose the report you would like to view. I chose “Tests with Linked Defects”. In the right hand side you can see its details:

Once you click on the “Configuration” tab, you can set the proper parameters for the report or graph you would like. Set the parameters and click on “Generate”.

The view tab will have a link to the previously generated reports:
The report:

2) Dashboard View Module:

This is more like the port folio page of your Demat account.  This is where all the graphs and reports that you have created using the analysis view are displayed for you in a single view.
Click on this icon,  to create a new dashboard page.
Provide a name for the page and click OK.

Once the page is created, you can add what graphs that you would like to be a part of this page. The graphs will be from the analysis view.
You can choose the graphs you would like. I am going to choose just one, “test” for the sake of this tutorial. It gets added to my “Configuration tab” and I can view it from view.

View tab:

Now let’s add both the graphs to our dashboard page and see how it looks.
Configuration tab:

View tab:

So, there you have it, all in one place!

Miscellaneous Topics:

I am now going to introduce to you the other options that are available in the sidebar of ALM. They are not widely used (at least not so far) but I believe they come with a huge potential. So, I encourage you to try and use them in your projects (if applicable) and see if they would help. The topics are:
1) Libraries and Baselines: Libraries are nothing but a set of entities in your projects and the relationships between them. For example: A library can be all the requirements that are specific to UI changes that are being made to your AUT
ALM lets you share libraries among projects so you can identify dependencies.
To create a library – Click on the “Libraries” option from the side bar and on any folder (or create a folder), right click and choose “New Library”. The following window opens up and as you can see, a library can consist of Requirements, Resources, Components and Tests. You can choose them in the below window.

Once you create a library you can create a baseline with it. A baseline is a snap shot of your library at any given time. To create a base line you can right click on any library and select “Create Baseline” option.
So when you compare different baselines you will know what the progress of your library has been like at a certain time.
2) Test Resources:

• If in your project you have a consolidated sheet (MS Excel) of user IDs and password that you use for your testing. Instead of having a local copy on each machine you want to maintain it in ALM. You can do so by uploading it to QC as a Test Resource
• A Test resource can be used by one or more tests.
• You can also define what tests depend on what resources.
• To sum up – You can upload and download resources, link resources and view dependencies through ALM.

Points to note:

1. ALM can be used for Agile, Iterative or Sequential models of projects.
2. Version control is an inbuilt feature.

In Conclusion:

This finishes our QC tutorial and I sincerely wish that you got to get a feel of what this tool is all about and what it can do for you through this series.

HP Quality Center Tutorial (Day 6) – Defect Management

Through the series of these tutorials we have seen how to create releases, cycles, requirements, tests and test sets in ALM. We also saw how we can establish logical relationships among these entities to make metric collection as well as traceability an inbuilt activity in our testing process.
You can check all these tutorials listed in our first QC tutorial here.
Also in the Test lab, we executed some tests. If the test passed, then all is well. If it fails, there is a reason for the same. Commonly, any deviation from the expected value is a defect.
Apart from that, defects can be:

1. Variation in expected and actual results
2. Documentation errors
3. Un-testable requirements that you want to report and track
4. Environment failures that prevent you from testing

QC has a wonderful mechanism that lets you create and track any kind of defects. In the following steps, we will see how defect management is supported through ALM.

How to add a defect to ALM

Step #1: Login to ALM to the right project and go to “Defects” tab by navigating from the sidebar. The lists of defects under the project are displayed in a list here.
Step #2: Click on “New Defect”.  Enter the required details. As you can see all the fields in red are mandatory to enter. (click on any image to enlarge)

Step #3: Choose defect type

Step #4: Choose severity

Step #5: Enter other details and describe the defect in the “Description” box. You can provide attachments. The other tabs in this dialog are for additional details. Again, project specific.

Step #6: This defect will now appear in the list. It has a unique ID to be identified with.

Step #7: You can now change its status.

Step #8: Assign it to another user:

Step #9: Or if this defect is linked to any other defect or you can do so, by choosing “Linked Entities” from the left side bar and choose the other defect that is causing or effecting this defect.

How to link the defect to a test case:

Step #1: Go to Test lab tab and choose the test that failed and the defect is related to that failure.

Step #2: Click on “Linked Defects”. Here you can either add a new defect and link it by click on this icon: . If you do so, follow the steps that you did in the above section and the defect created will get linked.

Step #3: I am going to choose the icon:   To link already created defect

Step #4: Enter the ID and Click “Link”. The defect gets linked.

Step #5: The linked defect can be seen in the test plan as well as requirements.


That finishes our end to end flow from Release to defects.
Tip: Please take a moment and try to see all the field values in the defect details. This will help you get excellent insights into how QC has a field for everything you can ever think of to add to the description to make it completely complete. I specially emphasize on the “Status” field. This will show how QC is not just a tool to place all your defects at one place but it actually is at the crux of the defect management process. All the states that you would find in a defect life cycle can be set through the “Status” field. I find that it’s most wonderful feature.
For more details on how to write a good defect report, refer this sample defect report.

Points to note:

1) We have worked with adding a new cycle under a release in the tutorial number 3 and it is mainly a testing related activity. Similarly, you can add a “New Milestone” signifying a certain step in your Project Management Activities.
2) Even though ALM is test management tool, the development and other support teams also have access to it. One of the reasons is to update the defect status.
3) The attachments for a defect are not mandatory but always provide a screenshot of the error in the attachment whenever applicable and possible.
4) The mandatory fields to be entered during the creation of a defect are defined by your Admin and may differ from project to project.
5) The other drop-down values are also defined by your admin.

Conclusion:

Now you are equipped with everything you needed to know on how to use QC for all your test management activities.  All we need to know now, is how to use its analysis features to make the test reporting and metric collection activities an integral part of your QA process.
We will learn the “Dashboard” side bar option that facilitates the same in the next tutorial which happens to be our last.
Again you may want to visit and bookmark our first Quality Center Tutorial page where we have listed all the tutorial in this training series.

HP Quality Center Tutorial (Day 5) – Executing Test Cases Using ALM/QC

In our last HP Quality Center tutorial we learned how to create test cases and link them to requirements.  For that we took an example of Gmail application and explained how to create and add test cases in Quality Center.
Please read our previous tutorial Creating and Managing Test Cases, as we are going to use same Gmail.com test cases for execution in this tutorial as well.

How to Execute Test Cases Using ALM/QC

Step #1: In the Test lab tab, choose the test set that you would like to run and click on “Run Test” or “Run Test Set”. Run Test- will execute the test set selected and the “Run test set” will run the entire set one test after the other until the end.  Click on “Being Run”. (Click on images to enlarge)

Step #2: If it is an automation test and the tool is integrated, then it launches and runs it in the testing tool. In that case it auto populates the test result.

Step #3: Since ours is a manual test, we will have to execute the steps manually on our AUT and set the results. Go to the test status field and click on it to set it to a certain value. You can also enter the actual result in the space provided.

Step #4: I am going to choose “Passed”. And am going to do the same for all the steps.

Step #5: When done, click on the cross button to the dialog. The following confirmation message is displayed. Click Yes

Step #6: Now you see, the status of the test is marked as passed.

Step #7: Let us execute the next test in the list.  I will follow the same steps and fail just one of the steps. The status of the test goes to failed if any one of the steps fail.

Tip: You can change this status any time you wish by clicking on the status column and setting the desired value.

Check the execution status in the Test Plan tab:

Once you have executed the test case, go back to the test plan tab and open the corresponding test case. Go to Test Configurations tab and the following is how the execution status gets reflected.

Check the execution status in the Requirements tab:

As you can see, the corresponding requirement’s direct cover status has changed to “Passed”.

Double click on the requirement and go to “Test Coverage Status”

Points to note:

1) The different states of a test case execution can also be customized by the Admin.
2) You can choose to parameterize a manual test by adding parameters to it. When the test is run, the actual test data can be entered.
3) At every step in your ALM you can send email through it. To do so, find this icon  in your ALM window and click on it. For example, in the test plan tab I am clicking on it.

Once you click on it, the following dialog opens. You can enter the required details and send an email.

Conclusion:

In previous and this tutorials we learned – how we create tests, add steps to the tests, link the tests to requirements, create test sets, adding tests to test sets, Executing the tests and finally back tracking our way to see how each activity effects the statistics each time.
Since we have seen how to pass or fail a test case, the only thing left to learn is to know how to add a defect for the failed test case. We will cover defects and other miscellaneous topics in the next tutorial which is also going to be the last in this HP Quality Center/ALM training series.

HP Quality Center Tutorial (Day 4) – Creating and Managing Test Cases

This is the 4th Tutorial in our HP Quality Center Training series. You can check all the previously published tutorials on this page.  Note – As the tutorial length is little long we have divided our initial 4 days training into 6 tutorials. This will help you to learn HP Quality Center step by step with every minute detail.
In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to create test cases in Quality Center
• How to link test cases to requirements
• Creating test suites in Quality Center

Creating Test Cases in HP ALM/Quality Center

We are working our way through ALM and have discussed Release, Cycle and Requirements. In our previous session we created a releases, added cycles to them, created requirements, mapped them back to cycles and releases and finally, we saw how the statistics are affected based on these mappings. In our article today, we will move on to the further steps.
We will keep referring to the same Gmail.com example that we did in the previous articles. If you are not familiar with the same, please refer to the below article that came out before this one.
Requirements and Release Cycle Management using Quality Center
If the following are the test conditions that you came up with for each of our features in the May release:
1) Login – with correct credentials

• a) Launch Gmail, Enter correct user name, enter correct password and click login
• b) Launch Gmail, Enter correct user name, enter correct password, select “Stay signed in” and click login

2) Login – incorrect credentials

• a) Launch Gmail, Enter correct username, incorrect password and click Login
• b) Launch Gmail, Enter incorrect username, correct password and click Login
• c) Launch Gmail, enter incorrect username, incorrect password and click Login.

How do you write a manual test case for the same? Either you would use a word doc or an Excel sheet. I used an excel sheet to write the 1(a) test case as an example:

Let us see how to create the same test case in ALM.

Test Plan Tab in ALM

Steps to create test cases under Test Plan tab:
Step #1: Login to ALM into the right project. Create the release, cycles and requirements as described in the previous tutorials.
Step #2: Go to the Test Plan tab by choosing “Testing->Test Plan” from the side bar.
Step #3: Choose “Subject” as your home folder and create a sub folder “ALM training” under it. I am going to create “May Release” and “June Release” Sub folders under it.

Step #4: Go to May Release folder and choose the option to create a new test.

Step #5: Enter name and then choose the “type”. Choose “manual” for our tutorial.

Step #6: Enter the other details. The designer name will be auto populated based on your login credentials.  Click OK. The test gets added.

Step #7: Now you can add your steps. Click on the “Design Steps” tab. Click on “New Step” icon.

Step #8: Enter the step details. The description and Expected Results fields come up complete text editing features that are self explanatory.

Step #9: I am going to create all the steps as shows above. This is how the completed test case looks like:

This completes the process of adding test cases and steps to them.
Step #10: Under May release I am going to add some more test cases.

Linking Test Cases to Requirements:

Steps to link test cases and requirements:
1) Select a test case created and click on it. All the properties get displayed in the right hand side tab. Go to “Req coverage” tab and click on “Select Req”

2) The requirements tree gets displayed on the side. Expand the tree and select the needed requirements.

3) Once done, close the requirement tree. You can link a test case to as many requirements as you would like. This is how the added requirement looks.

4) Let us now check, how this mapping effects the requirement. Go to Requirements tab from the side bar. Double click on the requirement that you just mapped and notice the “Test Coverage” details:

You see how the test details and it’s the test’s status is displayed. Since this test was just created and never run, the coverage status shows as “No Run”. Let us now move on in our tutorial and learn how to run a test.

“Test Lab” tab in ALM:

Imagine we have just begun the May release testing phase. The first cycle is Smoke test. We are not going to execute all the test cases we have.

• Briefly, a smoke test is a high level test performed by the QA team on an AUT as soon as the code is deployed to make sure the application did not break. So we are only going to execute test cases 1-a and 2-c.

• Similarly for sanity testing, which is checking the key functionality of the AUT. We will execute 1-a, 1-b and 2-e

• Functional testing is everything.

Test lab tab will help us create test sets that contain the test cases that we need to execute in each phase. This is where the tester can execute the tests and record the test results. Let’s see how.
Steps to create test suites in Quality Center:
Step #1: Go to Test lab tab by navigating from the side bar. Create the folders as shown below:

Step #2: Under May release, choose the option to create a new test set

Step #3: Enter the test set name. Click OK.

Step #4: Once it is created. Click on “Select Tests” from the menu

Step #5: Select the tests as required

Step #6: Alternately if you choose the “Requirements Tree” tab, you can choose requirement and all the tests that are linked to it get added to your test set.

Step #7: Go ahead and create all the test sets. As you can see from the above screen shot I have created a test set each for each cycle.
Step #8: Tip: You can choose to add the same test multiple times in a test case. In that case, the second instance of the test will appear with a prefix [2].

Points to Note:

1) If you observe, we have created our releases, requirements, tests etc all under the parent folder “ALM training”. There is no rule that you should do that. You can choose a different name for your folder in each section. But as you have seen, it makes so much sense to use the same folder name.  For a real time project that you are working on and trying to use ALM for, try to come up with a name that you would want to consistently use across as the first step for your test management process.
2) The columns in the test plan tab or any other tabs can be customized by your project’s ALM admin.

Conclusion:

This finishes how we create tests, add steps to the tests, link the tests to requirements, create test sets, adding tests to test sets, and finally back tracking our way to see how each activity effects the statistics each time.