What is Test Management Software?

Test management is the process of taking your project's requirements, building a test plan, writing the tests, planning the test activities and capturing the results. This section explains what test management is, and what features you should look for in a test management tool.

Test Management Software

As software projects get ever more complex and intertwined and with the large number of different platforms and devices that need to get tested, it is more important than ever to have a robust process for managing your testing activities and making sure that limited testing resources are being focused on the areas of most risk and importance. test management software helps you manage that process.


Test management is one of the most important parts of the software lifecycle yet has often been neglected in terms of the availability of tools to make it more efficient and manageable. Integrated Test management software is available that can make your life easier and often is cheaper than purchasing separate tools for requirements, test case management and bug tracking.

What is Test Management Software

Traditionally, QA organizations use a variety of ad-hoc methods to manage their testing:

  • Requirements are often stored in MS-Word documents or MS-Excel spreadsheets
  • Test scripts for user acceptance testing stored in MS-Word, MS-Excel with results recorded on paper and transcribed manually back into the spreadsheet
  • MS-Access, MS-Excel or standalone web-based bug-tracking systems are used for tracking issues and defects
  • Automated testing (if done at all) is done with a variety of tools depending on the platform and language being tested (Java vs. .NET, web vs. client-server) and usually does not report back its results in any central way.

This leads to the following challenges:

  • Processes are ad-hoc and not repeatable across projects
  • There is no visibility between test cases, requirements and defects. How do you know when you are truly ‘done’?
  • Measuring progress and productivity during testing is time consuming and difficult
  • It’s hard to share information across the project and get real-time metrics regarding the quality of the system being tested
  • There is no central repository of test results from all sources – both automated and manual

Test management software is explicitly designed to address these challenges and provide the bridge between requirements, test cases and defects.


What Features Should It Include?

The following features should be part of any test management solution you consider:

  • Support for template test cases
  • Link bugs to test steps during test execution
  • Drill down from requirements to tests and incidents
  • Web-based graphs and reports

Why Choose SpiraTest for Test Management?

When you are looking to choose a test management system you need to make sure that it provides the functionality you need, can support the way you do 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 and any user defined attributes:


The rich editing features allow you to create test cases that are simple high level test scenarios or more detailed prescriptive test scripts depending on the type testing you are doing (e.g. exploratory vs. UAT testing):


Templating and Parameterization

SpiraTest 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 whole or from individual test cases in the test set.


Data Driven Testing

In addition, you can run the same test set multiple times, with different combinations of test parameters used in each iteration. This is possible using the SpiraTest test configurations feature:


Quick & Easy Manual Testing

SpiraTest provides the ability to execute groups of test cases - along with their test steps – so that the testers can follow the instructions and determine if the system being tested behaves as expected. Any deviations from expected behavior can then be recorded, and a new defect raised – linked to the test step failure.


SpiraTest has a several different ‘views’ for running tests, in addition to the step by step view (preferred by users less familiar with the system being tested), it includes a summary table view that is often by used by more experienced testers:


Finally, there is a special view for executing tests related to web-based applications where you can embed the application being tested inside SpiraTest itself to avoid having to switch screens:


Support for Test Automation

Rapise is our powerful test automation tool that is designed to work seamlessly with SpiraTest. Rapise can test web, mobile, and desktop applications as well as APIs. You can store, manage and version your Rapise test cases within SpiraTest and use RapiseLauncher to execute the tests on a globally distributed test lab.


Use Other Automation Tools with RemoteLaunch

Automated test scripts are a valuable way to perform regression testing on applications to ensure that new features or bug fixes don’t break existing functionality. You can use RemoteLaunch with SpiraTest to manage the automated testing process using different tools from different vendors, all reporting back into your central SpiraTest instance:


Requirements Management & Coverage

SpiraTest allows you to quickly and easily organize requirements in a hierarchical structure (for example the system requirements might be organized under the parent functional requirement).

Requirements can be prioritized, estimated and also associated with a specific release. Each requirement is displayed with its associated test coverage. You can move, copy and filter the requirements according to a variety of criteria.


SpiraTest lets you manage your requirements test coverage (also known as requirements traceability). Within SpiraTest, you can map each requirement to one or more test case that validates that the functionality works as expected.


With this information, SpiraTest lets you run requirements traceability reports and perform impact analysis on how critical each test failure is (i.e. how many high priority requirements does it affect).

Planning & Scheduling

To help you organize and manage your testing schedule, SpiraTest provides a Test Sets feature. Each test set can contain test cases from a variety of different folders and can be associated with a specific release of the system being tested.


Each test set can be assigned to a single tester for simple regression or functional testing, or you can assign each of the test cases in the test set to a different tester. This allows you to perform testing of different scenarios with the same tests:


Bug / Defect Tracking

Bugs can be either found during development / testing or when a system is in production. It is important to use a tool to manage your bugs and defects efficiently so that you deliver and maintain a quality product.

With SpiraTest the logging and capturing of bugs and issues is quick and easy. You can either log the bug directly from the My Page homepage:


Alternatively, you can log the bugs without having to leave the test execution wizard:


Defects can be categorized into different types, including bugs, enhancements, issues, change requests, and risks. Each type has its own workflow and business rules. Defects can be logged in the system either through the web interface or by sending an email to a specific email address.

Easy to Customize

SpiraTest supports a variety of different field types including: text, rich-text, dropdown lists, integers, decimals, user selectors, and date-fields.


Adapts to Your Process

Each of the defect, requirement, release and test case types in SpiraTest can follow its own customized workflow. The workflow editor lets you adapt SpiraTest to the business processes used by your organization. Each workflow consists of a customizable set of steps and transitions.


Flexible Reporting

Each project has a dashboard home-page that summarizes all of the information regarding the project into a comprehensive, easily digestible form that provides a “one-stop-shop” for people interested in understanding the overall status of the project at a glance.


SpiraTest includes an extensive reports library that can display information such as Requirements Coverage, Test Case Execution, and Incident Status. SpiraTest allows you to build a customized reporting dashboard featuring your frequently-used graphs, charts and reports.


SpiraTest includes a built-in custom report builder that lets you define report templates that can consist of multiple sections.


Multiple Deployment Options

We realize that customers have different data security and privacy needs. SpiraTest is available as both a cloud hosted service and also as an on-premise solution that can be deployed in your datacenter or private cloud.

So, in Summary

Instead of having to buy separate requirements management, bug tracking and testing tools, SpiraTest® provides a complete test management solution in one package.

SpiraTest® manages your project's requirements, test cases, bugs and issues in one integrated environment, with full traceability throughout the testing lifecycle.

  • The top three reasons that our customers choose SpiraTest over other solutions are:
  • Highly intuitive web application that provides a complete picture of a project’s status and health yet requires only a web-browser.

In addition, we provide superb technical support that ensures that enquiries 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, please:

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And if you have any questions, please email or call us at +1 (202) 558-6885