Test Management: Detailed Guide With Challenges And Examples

OVERVIEW

Test Management is the method of organizing, planning, and controlling the testing of a web product or system. It involves activities such as creating a test plan, identifying test cases, executing tests, and reporting results. Before releasing a product or system to customers, Test Management ensures that it meets its requirements and is applicable for its intended use. As part of the software development life cycle, this process can help identify and fix bugs early, which can reduce long-term costs and time.

Testers, developers, and stakeholders work together to ensure every user story delivered fully satisfies the end-user requirements. Testing takes multiple phases; however, the focus remains on providing a hassle-free user experience—whether for a mobile app or an e-commerce website.

This is where Test Management can help you achieve the same. The primary objective of Test Management is to ensure traceability by planning, organizing, and tracking your software tests. This process is critical, detailed-oriented, and vital to the success of the entire testing process.

Test Management involves managing and monitoring the software application's testing activities, documents, and other aspects. It ensures the software applications are of high quality and have been through rigorous testing. With Test Management, you can organize, control, analyze, and trace the software testing process and manage your software testing resources.

The Test Management goal is to prioritize critical tasks and determine who has the right set of expertise to accomplish those tasks. It helps in managing resources and anticipating testing-related challenges. Test Management is a crucial part of the software development life cycle that ensures a robust testing process.

Additionally, you can leverage Test Management tools to streamline your Test Management process. They enable the auto-creation of requirement traceability matrix, which represents the functional coverage of the application under test.

It is recommended to initiate Test Management as soon as software development begins since it applies to the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Test Management is vital as it ensures high-quality software applications. It provides bug-free applications, meets customers’ requirements, and assists in software delivery with tight deadlines. There are numerous benefits of Test Management that help the team to improve their test efficiency and save costs.

Some of the benefits of incorporating the Test Management process are as follows:

• Enforces customer satisfaction.
• Defining well-defined outlines can improve software quality.
• Provide easier access to test data for teams across different geographies.
• Reduce design-related flaws and lines of code.
• Effective utilization of test resources.
• Better collaboration between teams.
• Streamlines the process of tracking test cases.
• Ensures a unified-testing process

The entire testing team and developers play a crucial role in the Test Management process. Here the Test Manager is responsible for the Test Management. He takes care of the resource planning & management and fixes issues that create a roadblock in the testing process.

The Test Manager or Test Lead is responsible for,

• Forming and leading the test team to the project’s success.
• Defining the scope of the test.
• Organizing and allocating resources for testing.
• Applying the test metrics and measurements.
• Ensuring consistency and quality of software applications.
• Planning, setting up, and managing the testing effort.

The Test Manager must clearly define their role within the organization.

Organizational structures vary based on the size of a test team, the companies that employ them, and the department's goals. While there are many different ways to organize a testing team, it's important to understand how these structures work so you can make informed decisions.

A common structure used in most smaller companies is the matrix structure. It allows individuals to be assigned to multiple projects at once. This flexibility is particularly valuable when there is a large volume of projects and limited resources.

Testing teams in larger companies often use a functional structure. This structure helps manage large testing departments and promotes accountability in test activities across a company.

While certain organizational structures will work better for some situations, the most important thing to remember when designing your testing organization is that you need to define what your needs are and make decisions accordingly clearly.

Organizational structures directly affect Test Management models in the same way they affect all other aspects of software development. Different organizational structures have a different impact on test management. Hence Test Management varies according to the skill and experience of the testing manager as well as according to the testing manager's position in the organizational structure.

This Test Management tutorial will discuss the different components of the Test Management process. Test Management consists of five major components.

• Test Documentation: It contains all documents that outline the techniques, developments, metrics, and results attained by the testing team. You can consolidate all the available data to track future project requirements, manage test coverage, and measure testing efforts.
• Test Estimation: Test estimation is the process of estimating how long an activity will take to complete. The estimation of effort for the test is one of the essential parts of the Test Management process.
• Test Metrics: They measure the progress, quality, productivity, and health of the software testing process. By providing reliable data about the testing process, software testing metrics are intended to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the software testing process.
• Test Progress Measurements: It measures total defects found in a software application, the effort required to fix them all, the number of undetected defects, and the number of unexecuted test cases.
• Metrics for tracking the testing lifecycle: The metrics for tracking the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) involve monitoring the test plan, the test analysis, the test implementation, the test execution, and the test closure.

Test Management enhances the entire software development and delivery process. To leverage the true potential of Test Management, it's essential to carry it out in an organized and systematic manner. This is where the Test Management Process comes in. It allows you to manage your testing activities from beginning to end and provides facilities for planning, controlling, tracking, and monitoring projects throughout the entire lifecycle.

The Test Management process is divided into two parts:

• Planning
• Risk Analysis
• Test Estimation
• Test Planning
• Test Organization
• Execution
• Test Monitoring and Control
• Issue Management
• Test Report and Evaluation

Planning

A test manager outlines the comprehensive plan for the entire test life cycle during the planning phase. This comprises:

• Risk Analysis: In Test Management, risk analysis is the initial step. Before the project begins, the test manager starts working on it. The risk analysis process identifies and analyzes potential issues that can negatively impact business initiatives. Early risk analysis and identification save project costs and help avoid possible losses.
• Test Estimation: This enables the test manager to quantify the time and effort required to accomplish a task. For example, the necessary tools, resources, budget, human expertise, project timeline, and test completion costs. The correct time estimation helps in best planning, execution, and task monitoring and offers accurate test scheduling.
• Test Planning: Test planning is one of the most critical phases of the Test Management process. It ensures all testing activities have been carried out smoothly and efficiently. A test plan specifies the objective, strategy, approach, scope, resources, etc. During test planning, the test manager uses a comprehensive document outlining the Test Management strategy during test planning. It includes all the information recorded during the risk analysis and test estimation phases.
• Test Organization: After the test planning stage, you will need to organize an efficient testing team for testing. Therefore, you need highly-skilled software testers to effectively carry out the entire testing process.

Execution

The second part of Test Management involves test execution.

• Test Monitoring and Control: When testers are carrying out the test plan, it's critical to keep an eye on the testing that is currently being done. This provides feedback on the progress of the testing. Additionally, the test manager can use this feedback to instruct the team members on how to plug any loopholes and enhance the testing quality.

Test Monitoring helps achieve greater visibility of test results and coverage. For large or complex projects, an automated tool can help in test monitoring to gather the data, whereas, for small projects, one can gather all the data or documents about test progress.

• Issue Management: In addition to test monitoring, a test manager is responsible for identifying and fixing any issues during the testing process. It's also critical to prioritize issues, report them, and assign them to the team member with the right set of expertise to resolve them. The organization must also ensure that the project doesn't exceed budget, the original deadline, and customer trust are all met.
• Test Report and Evaluation: With a test report, you can identify test coverage, product quality, and any further improvements. A test report also helps evaluate how much testing is required. Once the product is completed and tested correctly, the test manager creates a test report containing a detailed analysis of the testing process and current software quality before the software moves into the final development process.

The testing gets more complicated as we progress through the software development process. In worst cases, your release date could be delayed if you turn a blind eye to the minor aspect of testing. To orchestrate our release cycle, we have Test Management tools available in the market.

Using Test Management tools can help you in,

• Easier bug detection
• Integrating with testing platforms
• Developing Test Reports and Traceability Metrics
• Building a scalable environment
• Manages users who access the test reports
• Ensuring Security of test data

Shown below are some of the best Test Management tools:

• Xray: Xray is the manual & automated Test Management tool for Jira. It helps organizations to enhance their product's quality through efficient testing. Along with JUnit, NUnit, Robot, and other test automation frameworks. Xray supports manual testing and automated testing, including BDD using Cucumber.
• Kualitee: Kualitee is a Test Management tool that makes team collaboration quickly and eliminates the pain point of your testing process. With its well-designed dashboard, you can effortlessly assign tasks to the team and constantly remain on top of ongoing progress.
• Qase: Qase is a Test Management tool with a modern and simple interface. It is a complete solution for Test Management. Qase includes Test case management, issue management, test planning, test runs with insightful reports, a robust API, and webhooks.
• TestMonitor: TestMonitor is the end-to-end Test Management solution. TestMonitor got you covered whether you're implementing enterprise applications, creating a high-quality app, or simply need assistance with your test project.
• TestFLO: Deviniti's TestFLO for Jira is a Test Management tool that manages and runs tests using custom fields and workflows and is tightly integrated into the Jira issue view. It can be configured to suit compliance and the team's most extreme requirements.

Apart from the tools mentioned above, you can also leverage the below Test Management tools.

• Zephyr Scale
• PractiTest
• Zephyr Squad
• TestCollab
• Requirements and Test Management for Jira (RTM)
• XQual
• Testpad
• JunoOne
• Klaros-Testmanagement
• QACoverage
• JIRA
• QAComplete
• TestRail
• SPIRATES
• Testiny

This section of the Test Management tutorial discusses the frequent challenges that arise during the Test Management process.

• Other than specialized or sophisticated applications, very few software applications get enough time in the dev cycle to attain a high degree of quality. Large projects face time limitations on testing tasks, and the complex ones are assigned to a short testing cycle. Eventually, it impacts the overall Test Management process, leading to the constant shifting of priorities and tasks and a reduction in quality metrics and test results.
• Finding the right resources to perform required testing activities can be challenging. Various tasks may share the same Test Resources. In addition, there can be a shortage of human resources.
• It is possible that testing resources are not available in the same geographic location. There are also some challenges with the teams around the globe, such as how can they share artifacts and stay coordinated without causing delays and conflicts? How can a project maximize efficiency with a geographically distributed development team?
• Validating requirements is a high-priority testing task. It requires requirements that are complete, unambiguous, and testable. Ineffective requirements management can lead to more significant issues during testing.
• Testers and developers must work in tandem together to ensure the best product quality. In system and software development, the testing team's work is almost exclusively concerned with the testers. However, everyone, especially the developers, must know what has been tested and what still needs testing.
• A significant challenge of managing tests is not reporting the correct status at the right time.

Testing efforts ensure superior quality of products through Test Management. However, as the complexity of an application increases, the number of test cases also increases, which makes test case management more complex. This requires detailed testing to replicate issues in real-user conditions. Procuring device labs for web and mobile application testing can be expensive, hard to maintain, and comes with scalability issues.

This is where online testing cloud platforms like LambdaTest makes your life easier.

LambdaTest is a cross browser testing platform that enables devs and testers to run both manual and automated testing of web and mobile apps across 3000+ different browsers, operating systems and real device combinations. Organizations can ensure quicker developer feedback and a faster go-to-market by unlocking the potential of test execution on the cloud.

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube Channel and get the latest tutorials around Automation testing, Cypress E2E testing, Responsive testing, and more.

Here is a quick rundown of the LambdaTest platform’s features:

• Run Selenium, Cypress, Puppeteer, Playwright, Appium, Espresso, and XCUITest automation across 3000+ real desktop and mobile environments.
• Real-time browser testing on 3000+ environments.
• Test on real device cloud.
• Blazing fast test automation with HyperExecute.
• 120+ integrations with third-party tools for CI/CD, Project Management, Codeless Automation, Test Management tools, and more.

You can also integrate LambdaTest with Test Management tools like TestRail, and Zebrunner to track, manage, and hasten your software release cycle. In addition, you can harness the power of online Selenium Grid to perform automated browser testing of your websites and web applications across different browsers and OS configurations.

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Test Management helps increase product quality and meet tight customer deadlines. As organizations strive to achieve faster go-to-market with the finest products, it's essential to carry out the Test Management process properly. If followed correctly, the process will result in better products and, therefore, more satisfied customers.

In this section of the Test Management tutorial, we will look at some of the best practices one should follow while carrying out the Test Management process.

• Incorporating testing in your SDLC will help you reduce add-on costs. You can begin your test process once the test cases have been written.
• The reutilization of test resources and test automation enhances the software product's quality and the team's effectiveness. Additionally, it saves you time and effort.
• Perform Iterative testing to generate primary testing criteria—this risk-based approach helps reduce bugs and unexpected testing delays.
• The different types of testing, such as security, agile, mobile, analytics, big data, etc., require various testing approaches to suit the specific framework. Using a requirement-based testing approach is recommended to validate the application and estimate the amount of testing effort required.
• Leveraging the skills and effective coordination of co-located testing resources help in maximizing productivity, overcoming resource limitations, improving timelines, and ultimately increasing the ROI. It’s best to utilize web clients or automatically replicated data to overcome the underlying technical constraints.
• Testing requirements and efforts vary according to the project. Therefore, a customizable Test Management process is needed to create an automated workflow. The Test Management process should be repeatable and scalable, allowing for further optimization and modification.
• Testing and development teams must work collaboratively to achieve maximum communication and seamless integration of application testing environments. It helps teams narrow communication gaps, increase application quality, and uncover unnoticed information.
• For proper communication, always inform about the correct status at the right time. A practical Test Management process involves sharing all relevant data like objectives and progress, at the right time, to the right stakeholders.

This Test Management tutorial looked at how software testing relies heavily on Test Management. It is a set of actions to help you achieve project objectives through planning, implementation, monitoring, and control. So ensure you follow the proper Test Management process and best practices and get 100% customer satisfaction.