For an IT company it is particularly important to deliver a software product with a high quality. Improving software development processes and automating them is a significant challenge. The software must be constantly tested and the results analyzed in order to quickly identify and eliminate potential errors. A test management solution provides extensive possibilities and advantages to structure and organize the testing of products. In this blog post we give an overview of our own Quality Assurance Test Management, which we have developed with Xray Test Management for Jira implement.
What is Quality Assurance Testing and what is it for?
Quality Assurance Testing (Software Testing) basically involves the examination of a software product for quality and defects. In a software test, a program is executed with the aim of finding defects due to software errors, collecting information regarding quality and providing an independent view of the software. A test management solution serves as a central tool for managing executed tests as well as for visualizing determined information in the form of a dashboard or report. This gives companies the ability to better assess risks in software implementation. Users of the software are thus assured that they have delivered a product of high quality.
What is tested in the software?
The requirements and functions that are tested vary greatly from project to project. However, 3 general features that are tested can be formulated. These include:
- Individual functions of a software product
- Process of installation in a new environment
- Load Test (simulation of the load on the software)
Why use Jira for Quality Assurance Testing?
Jira is an issue and project tracking software from Atlassianwhich has become very popular in the fields of software development, project management and customer communication. At XALT, we use Jira for bug tracking, planning, managing and documenting work as well as for software development, automation, support and testing. One advantage of Jira is that there is a wide range of apps and plugins that can be integrated and used with Jira.
Many agile teams use Jira software for their test management because of these extensive capabilities, so that software development and testing remains clearly within one system. At XALT, we take the same approach. We use the plugin Xray Test Management for Jira for this purpose, which offers functions for organization, planning and reporting on the test progress in software test management.
Xray Test Management for Jira
Xray Test Management for Jira is an add-on for Jira that specializes in illustrating and reporting test results. In addition, software developers are further supported in their test management when planning and organizing projects with an increased number of tests and complex test plans. Xray Test Management for Jira is based on Jira and offers in addition to the standard features of Atlassian's software the implementation of a complete test lifecycle including planning, development, execution and reporting. It is also possible to display reports from test reports in interactive diagrams in order to use them for further processing.
How we use the XRAY for Quality Assurance
At XALT we develop add-ons for Jira, which are derived from the Atlassian Marketplace can be installed. It is particularly important to us that the plugins work error-free. Therefore, we attach great importance to quality assurance and its automation. We develop the so-called UI tests, which simulate user input in browsers to test the user interface and functionality of our software. For the development and evaluation of these tests we use Xray Test Management for Jira.
Example:
Planning:
For planning the implementation of the test cases we use the test plans from XRAY.
Implementation:
At the beginning, the test cases are written. For our plugins, for example, we most often run UI (=User Interface) tests. For the UI tests we use the Selenium Webdriver framework, which allows the simulation and automation of user input in browsers. To check the function of individual HTML elements, we use JUnit (Java Unit). This is a framework with which unit tests of classes and methods in Java programs can be carried out.
Execution:
The tests are integrated and executed in our CI pipeline (Continuous Integration).
Analysis:
We then use XRAY to analyze and evaluate the test results. Statistics and diagrams are generated for the test executions, which provide a detailed overview of the successful and failed tests. This gives us as a development team the opportunity to examine the individual test executions more closely.
The individual test runs can also be automated. Automated tests are started when there has been a change in the software. This could be, for example, a new feature, such as the ability to edit the images in our Image Gallery be. If the quality assurance tests were successful, then the change is automatically implemented and a new update can be released. If the test runs are not successful, then we use the XRAY again and examine the results for the errors.
The test results can be presented directly to your customers as diagrams and graphics. In this way, you create the necessary transparency and trust for further successful cooperation.
Conclusion - Quality Assurance Tests with XRAY
The software tests are important to identify errors as quickly as possible and to fix them painlessly. This gives us the opportunity to provide our customers with a consistently high-quality software application. The advantage of XRAY is that a constant test environment is available by means of automatisms and updates are continuously checked for errors.
