Download - Managing Your First Project With Rational Quality Manager

Managing your first project with IBM RationalQuality ManagerSkill Level: Intermediate

Michael D. Kelly ([email protected])ConsultantMichaelDKelly.com

28 Oct 2008

Built on the Jazz™ platform, IBM® Rational® Quality Manager is a collaborative,web-based, quality management solution that offers comprehensive test planningand test asset management for the full software lifecycle.

IBM® Rational® Quality Manager is a collaborative, Web-based, qualitymanagement tool for comprehensive test planning and test asset managementthroughout the software lifecycle. It is built on the Jazz™ platform and is designed tobe used by test teams of all sizes. It supports a variety of user roles, such as testmanager, test architect, test lead, tester, and lab manager, as well as roles outsideof the test organization. This article explains how to set up a new project in RationalQuality Manager and reviews several of the basic things that you can do with it inyour projects.

For this exercise, you will be testing BookPool.com. It is good to use as an examplebecause it is intuitive (most people have ordered something online) and it has plentyof features and content. Before you start testing, you need to create a new user.

Create a new user

To create a new user, follow these steps:

1. Log in as the default administrator (user name: ADMIN; password:ADMIN).

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2. If this is the first time that you have started Rational Quality Manager onthis server, it can take a couple minutes to load. When the dashboardfinishes loading, look for the Admin menu. From that menu, select JazzUser Administration (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Admin menu

3. That will load the User Management screen with "Active Users" as thedefault. On that screen, select Create User.

4. Enter a name (use your name), user ID, and e-mail address (youre-mail address), and then select the appropriate Repository,Permissions and Client Access Licenses for your new user (seeFigure 2).

Figure 2. Creating a new user

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5. When you are finished, click Save.

Note:Notice that the new user is created with a default password that is the same as theuser ID. Later, that user ID and password will be what you use to log in.

6. When the user has been created, you should see the confirmationmessage that says "User created successfully. Return to Manage Users"(Figure 3).

Figure 3. Confirmation dialog box

7. When you see that message, click the Return to Manage Users link. Youwill see the user that you created listed under Active Users.

Plan your test

The test plan in Rational Quality Manager is used to guide the work. It defines theobjectives and scope for a test and contains the criteria to determine when yourtesting is complete. Here are some of the things that you can do with the RationalQuality Manager test plan:

• Track reviews, approvals, and test plan status

• Create and manage test cases and associate them with the test plan

• Import and track project requirements from external requirementsmanagement tools and associate these requirements with test cases, orassociate requirements directly in the test plan to track coverage

• Associate environments (browsers, databases, operating systems, andother items) that are supported and tested by the test plan and use thoseto generate test configurations and track coverage

• Size the overall test planning and test execution effort and defineschedules for each test iteration

• Define business objectives, test objectives, quality goals, and entrance

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and exit criteria

The plan is designed as a series of templates that you can customize to your ownspecifications. If there are sections in the test plan that you do not think you will use,simply remove them. If something is missing that you would like to add, you cancreate your own test plan sections and add them to the template.

Follow these steps to see how to create a simple test plan by using the default testplan configuration:

1. Log out of Rational Quality Manager and log back in as the user that youjust created. This time when your dashboard loads, you will see yourname (assuming that you entered your name when you created the userrecord).

2. In the left navigation area, click the Planning icon and select Create TestPlan.

3. When the Create Test Plan tab finishes loading, start by entering a namefor the test plan in the header and selecting the template type. Set theTemplate field to Default Test Plan Template.

4. After you have done that, click Save. (Until you get comfortable working inthe tool, save early and save often.)

Figure 4 shows the result.

Figure 4. Saved Test Plan template

The test plan is segmented into three main sections:

• Header (shown in Figure 4)

• Table of Contents (where you manage the sections in your test plan)

• Section detail area (thats where the work gets done)

In each section, you will see a Work Item with a Create link.

5. In the Summary section (which is where your cursor should be bydefault), click the Create link.




6. This brings up the Create Work Item dialog view (Figure 5). All you needto do is to select an owner and a due date. When you have done that,click OK.

Figure 5. Create Work Item dialog

This action does two things:

• First, it creates a task link in the Work Item field where the Create linkused to be.

• Second, it creates a work item that is assigned to you for trackingsomething that you need to do.

Note:You do not need to navigate all 15 sections of the default test plan now. All you needin the plan is basic information so that you can navigate through the key features ofthe tool.

7. Next, navigate to the Requirements section and click the Add NewRequirement icon:

8. This will open a form for entering requirement details. Under theOverview tab, enter a Summary and a Description.

This example also includes a requirement for the Subject navigation panel on theBookPool.com home page, with details copied from that Web site into the form.Figure 6 shows the completed information:

• Summary: The top left-hand navigation for the site

• Overview tab, Details section:

• Type: Requirement (selected from drop-down menu)

• Severity: Major (selected from drop-down menu)




• Owned by: Unassigned (drop-down menu option)

• Created by: (filled in by default)

• Description: "The site should be searchable by subject, with thefollowing subjects available:"

Figure 6. Requirement details

9. You can add any requirement. When you are finished, click Save.

You should see your requirement added to the table in the section detail, as Figure 7shows. Notice the link under the Status ID column. (But do not click it, because it is




another Work Item link, and you' will see more on that later in this article).

Figure 7. Details table

10. Next, navigate to the Test Cases section and click the Add New TestCase icon:

11. This will open a form for entering test case details. Enter a Name,Description, Template, and Owner.

This example shows a test case added for the navigation panel referenced in therequirement added previously (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. New Test Case details




Note:You have the option to enter Category, Function, and Theme. Those three valuesare included to give you a way to classify test cases for subsequent grouping andreporting. On a default installation, the drop-down menus beside those fields areprobably blank. When you log in as an administrator, you can assign values to themby going to Admin > System Properties > Test Case Categories, or you cansimply click the Manage Test Case Categories icon, which is available in both thetest plan and test case views:

12. Before you move on, make sure that you enter a Weight. The idea behindsetting a weight for a test case is that not all test cases are equal; someare more important than others. Later, after you run the test, you can usethe weight to distribute your results (youll see that in what follows). If atest marginally passes, but some things dont fully work, you can say 70%pass, 30% fail by using the weight sliders. With a weight of 1, this isimpossible. That is why using a scale of 1-100 works well.

13. When you are finished, click OK.

You should see your test case added to the list in the section detail (Figure 9).

Figure 9. Test case added to the Details section




14. That should be enough to get you going, so click Save again.

After saving, you can close the test plan tab by clicking the X icon next to the testplan name:

Or, you could dig into specific work items contained in your test plan by selectingthem directly from the plan.

Navigate the dashboard and viewlets

So far, you have a test plan, a single requirement, a single test case, and a singletask. In this section, you learn where to find those items and how to work with them.

In many enterprise-level tools, one of the biggest challenges can be tracking thework assigned to you. Rational Quality Manager helps with that by providingcustomizable dashboards that can help you not only track project status but alsokeep track of the work you and the rest of the team need to do.

Navigate back to the default dashboard to see some of the default viewlets:

1. Either close your test plan or simply click the Home tab to return to thedefault dashboard.

2. When you get there, you may need to refresh the view to get the updatethat shows the work that you just did. To do that, simply click the Refreshbutton:

3. One of the first viewlets to load, under the Welcome viewlet, should beone titled My Tasks. That viewlet should contain both the test case andthe test plan section documentation task that were created earlier.

Figure 10. My Tasks viewlet




Selecting any of those links takes you directly to the work item so you can work on it.

4. Below that, you should see a summary of your current requirementscoverage (Figure 11). Notice the test coverage is bad right now (0%), butthat is OK, because it is only one requirement at this point. The goal toreach by the end of this exercise is 100%.

Figure 11. Status of current requirements coverage




Tip:Clicking on this viewlet takes you to a more detailed reporting tool for requirementscoverage where you can customize parameters for reporting.

5. You should also see an "Execution status per tester" chart and anotherchart for "Unfinished work item count." They are not included herebecause they are large and, at this point, not very exciting.

You will see additional viewlets for defect tracking and test execution. The goal hereis to get those to populate before you finish this exercise. However, it is alsoimportant that you see how easy it is to create your own viewlets to customize yourdashboard.




Now that you have a request out there, it is time to look at some of the differentoptions that you have to find it. There are two basic ways to monitor requests:

• The first is the brute force method, which is to look at all the requests andfilter based on different criteria.

• The second method is similar but a bit more elegant, you can add aviewlet to your dashboard.

Here, you will add a viewlet, but you can get to the same files by clicking the LabManagement icon and selecting All Requests.

To create a Requests viewlet for your dashboard, follow these steps:

6. On your dashboard (the Home tab), click the down arrow on the Generaltab (Figure 12) and select Add Viewlet.

Figure 12. Adding a viewlet to the dashboard

7. In the resulting viewlet explorer, select Work Item Statistics underQuality Manager and click Add viewlet.

Figure 13. Viewlet explorer




8. This should add the Work Item Statistics viewlet to your dashboard,probably at the top of the screen. You can move it around, but wherever itis, you should see a message stating "No work item query defined" yet.To define a query, click the Select a query link in that status message(Figure 14).

Figure 14. Work Item Statistics viewlet status message

The first thing that you need to do is to select the query that you want to run. Tokeep this example fairly simple, you wll use one of the predefined queries.

9. Click Edit next to the Query field, where you can select any of thepredefined queries in the Work Item Queries view. For this exercise,selected Open assigned to me.

Figure 15. Select a query to run




10. When you have selected the query, click OK. This carries your query overto the viewlet settings.

11. Next, under the Preferences tab, select the Parameter that you want toview. For now, select Type from the drop-down menu next to theParameter field (see Figure 16).

Figure 16. Select a parameter to view




12. When you click Save, the viewlet should load, based on the querysettings you selected (Figure 17).

Figure 17. Open Assigned to Me viewlet

This is an interactive viewlet. Selecting one of the areas of the viewlet will load atable of work items related to the query. Using these views can be easy ways totrack the work that you have in front of you, as well as to navigate Rational Quality




Manager.

Work with requirements

For many teams, requirements management is an essential aspect of a successfulsoftware project. If you defined your requirements in an external tool, such as IBM®Rational® RequisitePro®, you can import them into Rational Quality Manager, wherethey are visible in the Requirements view. You can also import requirements directlyinto test plans and test cases. You can also add requirements to your test planmanually.

When requirements are changed or deleted in the requirements source application,the status of the requirement in Rational Quality Manager is updated to show thelatest requirement status. Test cases with requirements that change or are deletedare identified as questionable. This enables you to adjust test plans and test casesquickly and accurately to respond to requirement changes. In addition to having theability to import requirements from external tools, you can create new requirementswithn the test plan.

Take a closer look at the requirement that you created earlier:

1. In the navigation pane at the left, select the Requirements icon and thenselect All Requirements.

2. That will load a table containing the requirement for the variousBookPool.com subject categories. Click the requirement ID link in thetable to load the requirement.

The first thing to do is to get this requirement moving through the requirementsprocess workflow.

3. To start work on the requirement, click the arrow next to the drop-downmenu by the title field and select Start Working:

That action signals to the rest of the team that you are working on this.

Your description already contains the list of categories from when you created itearlier, but assume that you want to add a new category called Software Testing.

4. Click Edit and add it that category the list.




5. After you have edited the list, click Save.

6. If you look back to the top, you will see that the status changedautomatically to In Progress.

7. To submit this requirement for approval, select Stop Working from thestatus drop-down menu.

8. Next, click the Approvals tab.

9. To submit your updated requirement for approval, click Approval to add anew row.

Figure 18. Setting a requirement for approval

10. Enter Due date and click Save.

Now that the requirement is updated, it is time to go back to the dashboard and takea look at that test case you created earlier.

Create and run the test case

Test case means different things to different people. For some, it is merely a unit ofwork. For others, it represents an idea. In Rational Quality Manager, you developtest cases to define the things that you want to test to ensure coverage, test forpossible issues, or to track your effort in specific areas of the application.

Test cases describe what you are going to test. In Rational Quality Manager, theyoften include preconditions and post-conditions for test execution and describe theexpected results. You can create a new test case independent of any test plan, oryou can create a new test case in the context of an existing test plan. When you adda test script to a test case, it is listed in the Test Scripts section of the test case.

Note:Rational Quality Manager integrates with IBM® Rational® Functional Tester, IBM®Rational® Manual Tester, IBM® Rational® Performance Tester, and IBM®




Rational® Service Tester for SOA Quality.

Associate your requirement with a test case

First, tie the requirement to a test case in the test plan:

1. In the navigation view on the left, click the Construction icon and selectMy Test Cases.

2. That should load a table containing your test case for testingBookPool.com navigation by subject category. Go ahead and click on thetest case id link in the table to load the test case.

3. You should notice a layout similar to the test plan you saw earlier: table ofcontents, section detail, and header. Things work pretty much the same.Select the section you want to work with, make your changes, and save.

4. To associate a requirement with your test case, click the Requirementssection in the Table of Contents.

5. When the requirements section loads, click the Add Requirement(s)icon:

6. This loads a a table of your current requirements. Select the check boxnext to your subject categories requirement and click OK. You will thensee your requirement listed in the Requirements table in the test case(see Figure 19).

Figure 19. Requirements view




7. Click Save so that you do not lose what you have done.

8. For a quick diversion, click the Home tab and check your test coveragereport again. You will need to Refresh your dashboard view. When it hasreloaded, you will see that you now have 100% requirements coverage(see Figure 20).

Figure 20. Updated requirements coverage status pie chart




9. To go back and run your test case, click the Test subject navigation tab(the tab for your test case) to returns to where you were before when youadded the requirement.

Associate a test script with your test case

Next, you need to add a simple test script to your test case. This example requiresonly a couple of steps, but it gives you a feel for the entire workflow.

1. To create a test script, select the Test Scripts section in the Table ofContents.




2. To add a test script to your test case, click the Add New Test Script icon:.

3. When the New Test Script dialog loads (see Figure 21), enter a Nameand Description. Unless you have other tools integrated with RationalQuality Manager, the only type of test script available will be Manual.

Figure 21. New Test Script dialog

4. When you are finished, click OK to list the new test script in the TestScripts section (Figure 22).

Figure 22. Test scripts list

5. Click the test script link. If you are asked to save the test case beforeviewing the new test script, click Yes. This loads a new tab with your testscript.

6. Under the Manual Steps section (Figure 23), click the Click to add link tostart adding test steps. The default test step type is Execution Step. Eachtime that you add a new step, the Click to add link moves down one rowin the Manual Steps table.

7. Add a step to open a browser and load BookPool.com.

Figure 23. Manual Steps section




8. Add a second step to verify that the subjects you added in therequirement that you created earlier are listed. To turn that step into aVerification Point, click the icon next to the step number and selectVerification Point (Figure 24).

Figure 24. Make the step a verification point

9. To save the test script, click Save and then close it and return to the testcase.

Run your test case and view results

Now you can run the test case and look at your results in the dashboard:

1. In the upper-right corner of the test case, click Run Test Case, which willopen the Run Test Case dialog. (Most of the fields on that dialog cannotbe populated, because there is additional setup required for somefeatures before you are production-ready).

2. Simply click Associate Results with a Test Plan and selectBookPool.com Phase 1 Test Plan from the drop-down menu for theTest Plan field (Figure 25).

Figure 25




3. Then click OK.

This opens the script execution screen. You should see a test progress bar and asection detailing the test script steps. As you run your test, you can addattachments, log defects, and add comments to the script. In the Script Stepssection, the small yellow arrow points to the row that shows the status of the step(Figure 26).

Figure 26. Script status update




4. When you are ready to execute a step, click the Apply icon to move tothe next step:

You will see that the Result for Step 1 gets checked off, and the execution progressbar moves to 50% (Figure 27).

Figure 27. Ready for Step 2

5. When you are executing a verification point, you can select severalresults. In this example, select Fail so that you can see some of the otherfeatures at work. When you apply the Failed status, you should see aFailed result. The progress bar moves to 100%, and an "ExecutionComplete" message is added to your script (Figure 28).

Figure 28. Step 2 failed, steps completed




6. When you are finished, click Close and show results to bring up theExecution Result screen.

7. From there, you can set the Actual Result for your test, as Figure 29shows (in case you want to show the test as passed, blocked,inconclusive, or another status, instead).

Figure 29. Actual result setting options

8. Check the weight distribution by moving the Weight Distribution slider toget the execution percentages for the possible results: Pass, Fail,Blocked, Inconclusive, Attempted.

Figure 30. Weight Distribution view




Tip:Although this example did not show it, you can also see what test environment thescript was executed against .

9. Review the Results Detail by clicking the Link to Results History optionfor that test case (Figure 31).

Figure 31. Result Details view

10. When you have finished making changes, click Save.

11. For another quick diversion, click the Home tab and check the testexecution report. You will need to Refresh your dashboard again. When ithas reloaded, you should see that you now have execution results (Figure32).

Figure 32. Test execution results




12. To go back to the execution results, click the Execution Result tab.

For this example, the test result is set to Failed for two reasons.

• First, BookPool.com does not have the Software Testing category thatyou added to the requirements.

• Second, that offers a chance to explain how to log a defect. Just followthe next steps.




13. From the Execution Result screen, click the Defects icon and select AddNew Defect from the drop-down menu.

14. This should open the defect entry dialog. You will be required to enter aSummary (or title), and it is advisable to also set the Priority.

15. Click Save.

When you return to your test results, you should see the defect related to the resultsin the upper-right corner (Figure 33).

Figure 33. Related Defects report

This gives you a defect that is tied to your test execution results, which is tied to yourtest case, which is also tied to both your test plan and your requirement. Youprobably get the picture from here: reports galore!

Next steps

Rational Quality Manager is intended to be an environment for both decision-makersand testers. Like all Rational software, it comes with default workflows and settings,but you can customize most of it for your projects. Rational Quality Managercaptures test-related data in one central location and makes that data available toeveryone on the team. It tracks task ownership and responsibility for individuals andteams, which makes task progress and status of deliverables clear.

Your challenge as you start to get more involved in using this software will hot begetting it to do what you want but will be in figuring out how to effectively use all ofthe information provided and learning how to customize some of the commonfeatures and artifacts to be most effective for you and the way you work. Keep aneye on IBM® developerWorks® for future articles on intermediate and advancedRational Quality Manager topics.

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Resources

Learn

• Visit the Rational software area on developerWorks for technical resources andbest practices for Rational Software Delivery Platform products.

• Read author Mike Kelly's related article on developerWorks: Lab managementwith IBM Rational Test Lab Manager.

• For tips, tricks, and updates, track the IBM Rational Quality Manager blog fortechnical resources and best practices for Rational Software Delivery Platformproducts.

• See the Rational Quality Manager product roadmap on developerWorks - aresource roadmap for all users.

• Explore Rational computer-based, Web-based, and instructor-led onlinecourses. Hone your skills and learn more about Rational tools with thesecourses, which range from introductory to advanced. The courses on thiscatalog are available for purchase through computer-based training orWeb-based training. Additionally, some "Getting Started" courses are availablefree of charge.

• Subscribe to the Rational Edge newsletter for articles on the concepts behindeffective software development.

• Subscribe to the IBM developerWorks newsletter, a weekly update on the bestof developerWorks tutorials, articles, downloads, community activities, webcastsand events.

• Browse the technology bookstore for books on these and other technical topics.

Get products and technologies

• To find more information about IBM Rational Quality Manager and relatedproducts, see the Rational Quality Manager page on developerWorks.

• Download trial versions of IBM Rational software.

• Download these IBM product evaluation versions and get your hands onapplication development tools and middleware products from DB2®, Lotus®,Tivoli®, and WebSphere®.

Discuss

• Participate in the discussion forum for this content.

• Check out developerWorks blogs and get involved in the developerWorkscommunity.



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About the author

Michael D. KellyMike Kelly is an independent consultant located in the Midwest of the United States.Mike also writes and speaks about topics in software testing. You can find most of hisarticles and his blog on his Web site, www.MichaelDKelly.com.




Download - Managing Your First Project With Rational Quality Manager

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