What is Test Management?
Test Management is the process software teams use to plan, develop, and execute. It reports the testing activity results during the software development life cycle. It is one of the most important phases of development because it ensures that the product is high quality and bug-free. Correct and timely evaluation is needed for it.
Need for Test Management
Now, let us discuss the need for test management.
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It helps develop better-quality software in as little time as possible.
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Different types of testing are done. It helps in the assessment of requirements for different tests.
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It identifies bottlenecks in the process. It also helps track useful quality metrics.
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It helps get into the entire project's progress and its release.
- It also increases the collaboration between the development teams and the stakeholders.
Test Management in JIRA
JIRA is a project management tool used by teams to plan, develop, and execute their projects efficiently. But, one can also utilize it for test management purpose. Although not very ideal, testing can be done primarily in JIRA. In JIRA, one has to write test cases for the test management process and treat it as an issue. But, all the testing process in JIRA has to be handled manually. Thus, we can integrate test management tools with JIRA for a smooth testing process.
Let us see how this all can be done.
Steps for Writing Test Cases
We must take specific steps to make the test management in JIRA work. They are as follows.
Step 1: Create a Test Case
Create an issue in JIRA for representing a test case. But in JIRA, issues are pushed to be done. It makes it difficult to reuse these test cases.Also, you can tweak a user story for it to be a test case. But, it will also serve as the same JIRA issues. Thus, reusing the test cases will still be problematic.
Step 2: Addition of Testing Status in Workflow
If you add a status of 'testing' to the workflow, you might find that the status has moved to ‘done’ before the testing part is executed. So, you should add a new workflow. It ensures that a test has not changed to ‘done’ before the testing process is completed. But, all these steps are to be done manually. It increases the time to complete the process.
Why Writing JIRA Test Cases Doesn’t Work
JIRA was not mainly created for test management but for project management. Moreover, test management in JIRA is a manual process that takes much more time than it should ideally take. Also, for comprehensive testing, the user struggles a lot more than usual. Therefore, writing test cases in JIRA is not ideal enough.
Benefits of Test Management in JIRA
Let us discuss some advantages of test management in JIRA as follows.
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Support for Agile Management: JIRA supports the agile project management approach. It helps teams track and handle their projects and their issues in such a manner.
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Configuration: The test management in JIRA is configurable to the business process. Software teams can use configurable tools for this process.
- Customizable Workflows: For suiting different needs of teams, it supports the building of custom workflows.
Limitations of Test Management in JIRA
Now, let us see some limitations of test management in JIRA below.
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Lack of Test Management Functionalities: Primarily, JIRA is designed for issue tracking and project management purposes. It does not have many functionalities suitable for test management.
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Lack of Automation Testing: JIRA supports limited integration with automated testing frameworks, and that too, via JIRA APIs only. Also, mainly all the methods are to be done manually.
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Scalability: Primarily, test management in JIRA is not ideal. It works well on small scales but not on big ones. But you can achieve higher scalability by using a test management tool for JIRA.
- Inability to Reuse Test Cases: The test set collects the executions and the test history in JIRA. It limits the reuse of these test elements. It increases the overall testing time.
Test Management Tools for JIRA
As we have seen in the limitations of test management in JIRA, it is a manual process. Also, the lack of testing functionalities makes it mainly challenging to do testing activities on JIRA. Thus, adding a test management tool to JIRA helps you in the smooth testing process of your project. It automates your testing process and helps you trace errors. You can integrate your tools with JIRA efficiently and write better test cases.
Here are some of the best test management tools to integrate with JIRA: Zephyr, Xray, TestRail, QA Wolf, QAlity Plus, Ranorex, QADeputy, Testsigma, and T4J.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is JIRA?
Jira is an issue-tracking management tool developed by Atlassian. It is an agile project management tool. It helps in tracking, planning, and releasing software.
What is Test Management?
Test management is the process of handling and monitoring software testing activities. It ensures that the resources are used optimally. It ensures that the areas of focus of the software are being handled carefully too.
What is Agile project management?
It is an approach to handling software development projects. It is an iterative process. It intakes valuable customer feedback with every cycle and makes changes.
What are some key features of JIRA?
JIRA comprises valuable features like customizable workflows, issue tracking, and collaboration tools. Also, reporting and analytics help in its performance.
What are some limitations of test management in JIRA?
Some limitations of test management in JIRA are its usability, scalability, and reporting limitations. Also, there is a lack of test execution ability and a lack of test management functionalities.
Conclusion
Software development projects require proper planning, developing, testing, and execution. JIRA is a famous project management tool. It helps software developer teams plan and execute their projects efficiently. Also, it supports test management. In this article, we learned about test management in JIRA.
To widen your horizon in this field, do read the following articles:-
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