Upcoming Feature: Entity Test Plan

User Story Test Plan

As you know, we’ve improved the QA module in Targetprocess a lot during the last year. Now we are about to start the last feature in this phase, which we think will make it simpler to work with test cases and organise them into clear and easy to manage structure as easy as it has never been before. This feature has a lot of advantages, however it requires some update of your existing data. We’d like to check what you think about the planned modifications. Maybe there are some specific cases which you’d like to share with us and which may change our plan.

So, let me describe what exactly we plan to do.

As you know, right now for every user story in Targetprocess you can create a set of related test cases, which later can be executed.

There are several requirements which are not supported by this structure right now:

• you can’t use the same test case to test different user stories;
• when you execute test cases in a user story, you can only see the last run results;
• there are only two run results for a test case - Passed and Failed - available right now and it’s not enough sometimes;
• you can’t specify a run result for every test step in a test case related to a user story;
• to add test cases to a test plan you need manually find them and assign to a test plan.

We’d like to solve these issues and introduce some additional functionality, which we know you look forward to. For example we'd like you to be able to create test cases for a bug, or easily re-use user story test cases for a release or iteration testing.

To make this possible, we want to convert all the test cases related to a user story into a user story test plan. That means that a user story will have a related test plan and all the test cases will be added to it.

There will be a new section in the right panel of a user story (and any other entity) view:

When there is no a related test plan connected to a user story you’ll be suggested to create it. When click this button, then a related to a user story test plan with the name “<User Story Name> Test Plan” will be created and opened automatically. So you’ll be able to create new test cases and test plans and link already existing ones to it.

As soon as it’s created you’ll see it’s details there instead:

• now when you can click the "125 Test Cases” unit in this section, then a user story test plan with a list of test cases will be opened.
• when click Start Run (or Create Run when there is no a related test plan run to this test plan), then a related test plan run will be opened and yo’ll be suggested to execute test cases in it one by one as it is implemented now for a test plan.
• when click the Run Results unit, a Runs tab of a related test plan will be opened. There you'll be able to compare a user story test plan run results.

This structure will allow to execute a user story test plan as many times you need.

Entity (Release, Feature, Bug, etc) Test Plan

Now imagine that you can also create a related test plan for any other entity in Targetpocess:  bug, release, iteration, request, etc. When you create a test plan for an entity, which has directly related (not connected via Relations) entities, a related test plan will automatically include the related entities' test plans by default. For example, when you create an iteration test plan, all the included into this iterations user stories and bugs test plans will be included into an iteration test plan automatically, so that you can quickly see what you need to test in this iteration. It will be possible to link additional test plans to an iteration test plan and remove the added automatically ones if you don’t need them. The advantage here is that you’ll get an iteration test plan with just one click and will be able to execute it as many times as you need.

As a result, you will have a very strong structure of test cases and test plans for every project in your company.

Solution Advantages and Required Changes

So the advantages of this solution would be:

• a possibility to create a test plan for any entity (bug, user story, feature, release, etc) in Targetprocess;
• a possibility to re-use (link) the same test cases and test plans to multiple entities (user stories, releases, bugs, etc.);
• a possibility to execute entity test plans multiple times keeping run results of every execution;
• a possibility to specify a run result for every test step;
• choose one of 4 different run results (Passed, Failed, On Hold, Blocked) for a test case in an entity test plan;
• have automatically generated a release, iteration, feature test plan with just one click.

To do that we’d like to convert all your user story test cases into a user story test plan. All the test case run results will be kept in a related user story test plan run, so that no information will be lost. The update will happen when the feature is released.

To do that we'd like to make sure you agree with such an update. Please let us know what you think. We look forward to you feedback!