Test Management: Why It’s Important, Process Steps, & How to Improve
As software projects get ever more complex and intertwined, as well as the large number of different platforms and devices that need to get tested, it’s more important than ever to have a robust process for managing your testing activities.
What is Test Management?
Test management is the process of overseeing testing activities and capturing the results to guarantee top-notch quality in software applications. This method involves efficient planning, organization, and visibility throughout the process to accurately forecast, control, and analyze the testing process while managing resources.
Why Test Management Tools are Important
Test management is a critical component of modern software development, playing a pivotal role in ensuring the delivery of high-quality software products:
- Quality assurance - ensures that software meets planned requirements and functions, reducing the chances of critical defects.
- Efficient collaboration - facilitates communication and coordination among team members and between teams, enhancing efficiency and decreasing misunderstandings.
- Traceability and visibility - provides traceability from requirements planning to test results, offering real-time insights into the progress.
Certain features should be part of any test management solution you consider:
- Track bugs, enhancements, risks, and issues
- Personalized dashboards and customizable reporting
- Intuitive interface with support for mobile devices
- Ability to integrate automated unit, functional, and load testing tools from different vendors
See the best Test Management Tools available right now with our in-depth guide.
Who Could Benefit from Test Management?
Improving test management processes has a broad positive impact across development, quality assurance, project management, and stakeholder satisfaction. Here are just some of the key beneficiaries:
- Project managers - provides better visibility for informed decision-making, aiding in accurate project planning.
- Testing teams - increases efficiency and productivity through organized test case management.
- Compliance and regulatory teams - ensures adherence to compliance requirements with well-documented testing processes.
- Stakeholders and clients - boosts overall customer satisfaction through higher software quality.
Test Management Process & Phases
Test management is largely broken up into two major phases — the initial Planning phase, followed by the Execution phase. Let’s take a look at each and their associated steps in more detail:
Planning
As the name suggests, this stage of test management is largely focused on setting the testing up for success and efficiency. It also encompasses factors like scope, budgeting, and more.
Requirement & Risk Analysis
The first step in test management is crucial to assess and evaluate potential risks associated with any project. Doing this early in the process will help mitigate negative impacts from issues down the road when costs (both monetary and time) will be higher. Once risks and the general requirements for the project are understood, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Test Estimation
Acting as a forecast for the project’s timeline and its sections, this step makes scheduling and subsequent planning more accurate. It also extends beyond just predicting the time that the project will take, and should also include information about necessary resources — from personnel skills to equipment to facilities needed.
Test Planning
With this information in hand, it’s time to put a more concrete plan together. The Test Plan is a single document that includes information such as the project scope, test objective, approach being taken, necessary resources, timeline schedule, and specific test deliverables along the way.
Test Organization
Once the Test Plan is finalized, assembly of the team can begin. Clearly define roles and responsibilities throughout the testing process, as this will help to find the right team members for the job. On top of creating the team itself, this step further defines and explains each testing activity, what its goal is, and what it consists of.
Execution
Now that the Planning phase is complete, it’s time to move onto the actual execution and management of the test and its results.
Test Monitoring & Control
This crucial stage is responsible for collecting and recording information across the project and test activities. It often includes things like performance testing so that the test manager can compare current status against what was forecast in the Test Estimation step. If testing isn’t going as planned, this step allows the test manager to correct deviations from the plan and bring actual performance back to where it was expected to be (some instances may require changes to the Test Plan to accommodate changes or setbacks).
Issue Management
While risk management and diligent planning can reduce the probability of many issues actually happening, it can’t predict every possibility. As issues do arise, a test manager should identify, document, and hopefully resolve them to keep testing and the project on track. Solutions may be handled by the test manager, or given to a team member with the required skill set to resolve it.
Test Report & Evaluation
After the completion of the testing, a report is organized that assesses the testing process as a whole. Not only does it include the results of the process, but also methods used to achieve them, learnings from issues or changes, and any other information relevant to the key stakeholders and developers.
Additional Resources & Reading
Why Choose SpiraTest for Test Management?
When you’re looking to choose a test management system, you need to make sure that it provides the functionality you need, can support the way you perform testing, and is flexible/adaptable enough that it will be able to handle your future needs.
Test Case Repository
SpiraTest provides you with a robust test case management functionality. You can organize test cases into folders, manage different test plans for each release, and sort, search, and filter your test cases by any of our standard fields or user-defined attributes:
Templating and Parameterization
SpiraTest also lets you write test cases as ‘data-driven’ parameterized test cases. Each step in the test case consists of the action being performed together with the specified test parameters:
You can then feed in different parameters to the test cases from either the test set as a whole or from individual test cases in the test set.
Support for Test Automation
Rapise is our powerful test automation tool that is designed to work seamlessly with SpiraTest. Rapise can store, manage, and version your test cases within SpiraTest and then execute the tests on a globally-distributed test lab.
Requirements Management & Coverage
Requirements can be prioritized, estimated, and associated with a specific release. Each requirement is displayed with its associated test coverage, and you can move, copy, and filter them according to a variety of criteria.
Easy to Customize
SpiraTest supports a variety of different field types including text, rich-text, dropdown lists, integers, decimals, user selectors, and date fields.
Flexible Reporting
Each project has a dashboard homepage that summarizes information such as Requirements Coverage, Test Case Execution, and Incident Status. SpiraTest also allows you to build a customized dashboard featuring your frequently used graphs, charts, and reports, making it easily digestible for people interested in understanding the overall status of the project at a glance.
Upgrade Your Test Management with Spira
Instead of having to buy separate requirements management, bug tracking, and testing tools, SpiraTest provides a complete test management solution in one package. It manages your project's requirements, test cases, bugs, and issues in one integrated environment, with full traceability throughout the testing lifecycle.
In addition, we provide superb technical support that ensures that inquiries and questions are dealt with in a timely and professional manner.
How do I Get Started?
To learn more about SpiraTest and how it can improve your test management: