A well defined and managed testing process guarantees exceptional quality and ensures optimum user experience. Therefore, test management, which is an approach used to achieve quality in minimum efforts, has garnered great importance during Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). With the help of this approach, one can properly manage, control, monitor, and understand the software testing process. Test management is performed with the help of automated "test management tools". Lets learn how "test management process" plays a major role in creating a defectless and easy to use software product.
Importance of Test Management:
The reasons for test management can be various. Moreover, they can vary from project to project, as well as from one team to another. From monitoring to allocating responsibilities, to tracking, controlling, and reporting the testing process, the uses of this process are uncountable. Hence, provided are reasons that make test management extremely important.
It offers assistance in tracking and managing requirements.
Improves the quality of testing, which automatically improves the effectiveness and quality of the software.
Allows test case management as per features and sprint releases.
Promotes rapid and hassle free testing.
Manages rapidly increasing software data, while removing complexities and issues relates to the software.
Allows better communication between all the stakeholders of the project as well as the team members.
Makes the task of tracking test cases easier and simpler.
Ensures that timely completion of testing.
Best Test Management Tools: 2019
The process of test management is carried out with the assistance of "test management software" or "test management tools". Very often, these tools are multi-purposed, as they are capable of performing multiple tasks, such as tracking, logging, reporting and incident management. As there are plenty of tools available in the market, finding an appropriate tool based on requirements and budget, can be quite tricky. So, here is a list of some of the popular "open source test management tools".
Best Open Source Test Management Tools:
qTest.
PractiTest.
QAComplete.
Meliora Testlab.
TestFLO For Jira.
TestLink.
XQual.
HP ALM Quality Center.
Zephyr.
TestLodge.
Tarantula Agile Test Management Tool.
Testcube.
Radii.
qTest: This is the most popular and widely used test management tool, which is used by small as well as large scale organization. It offers the software development and testing teams the lightning fast, scalable test management that seamlessly integrates with JIRA, ALM and other automation tools. Moreover, it helps create a centralized test management system for easy communication and rapid deployment. Other features of qTest are:
Cloud based management tool that supports agile testing tools, which further allows rapid deployment of software products.
Allows team coordination across multiple locations.
Creates detailed defect document automatically.
Offers full traceability between requirements requirements and associated defects.
PractiTest: PractiTest is an ALM test management tool that offers SaaS end-to-end QA & test management solutions. This flexible and innovative test management tool allows integration with other tools and makes issue tracking easy. This tools helps reduce redundant work and increases the productivity of your testing process.
Offers visibility into testing and helps manage various activities.
Enables easy and hassle free communication with various members of the team.
Designed to control the testing process.
Creates manual tests and organizes them based on cycles, sprints, etc.
QAComplete: Another popular and comprehensive test management tool, QAComplete has enterprise level capabilities that allows powerful reporting, organizing, and test execution. This tool improves collaboration, helps gain visibility, and accelerates the process of testing. Here are some other features of QAComplete:
Offers easy to use features.
Prioritizes testing efforts and effectively finds high risk defects early.
Seamlessly tracks and logs bugs.
Access, edit, and update defects in JIRA without leaving the tool.
Meliora Testlab:Meliora Testlab is a easy-to-use and extremely powerful test management tool that offers centralized testing of assets. This tools easily adapts to your requirements and changes and has all the required ALM features.
Offers fully customized fields and workflow.
Allows hassle free designing, verification, and tracking.
Provides great visibility in testing.
Works perfectly with DevOps, Agile, and other traditional projects.
TestFLO: An advanced management solution, TestFLO offers full test coverage and integration with JIRA. With outstanding flexibility, this tool can easily adapt to your process and help you get best results effectively. From designing to executing test process, TestFLO offers impeccable test coverage.
Can be used to associate and track requirements.
Imports automated test results from a CI server to JIRA.
Its integration with JIRA ensures that it does not require any onboarding, as the users in a familiar environment.
TestLink: A user friendly and most widely used web based open source test management tool, TestLink facilitates software quality assurance. This tools offers support for test cases, test suites, test plans, test projects and user management. Moreover, it allows both automated and manual execution of test cases. Other features of test link are:
Easy to integrate with many defect management tools.
Automated test case execution through XML-RPC.
Offers ease in assigning test cases, generating test plan, and test reports in various formats.
Allows effortless defect reporting.
XQual: Designed to avoid common errors faced while testing, XQual is can easily be integrated with all the continuous integration platforms. This tools manages your released, requirements, risks, specification, tests, campaigns, and bugs. Moreover, with XQual, you can enjoy requirements specification bug tracking along with exploratory, manual, and automated testing.
Offers smart KPT for decision makers.
Flexible and scalable application lifecycle management solution that offers assistance with complete delivery of projects, from start to finish.
75+ test automation framework supported.
Accelerates time to market and adds value to the business.
Open, Modular and 100% graphical designing.
Providing ALM solutions.
Strong bug tracking database.
Supporting multiple database like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and MariaDB.
Executing fully automated and manual test cases.
Time-shifting feature.
Powerful Search Engine.
HP ALM Quality Center: From requirement gathering to testing, HP ALM QC was developed to manage various phases of SDLC. This tool is multi-purpose as it acts as a test management tool as well as project management tool. HP ALM QC is extremely easy to understand and use and provides integration with external tools like HP UFT for automation testing and more.
Allows users to create KPIs using ALM data and track them against project milestones.
Promotes transparency by providing regular information about the project status to all the concerned stakeholders.
Offers hassle free defect sharing and project reporting.
HP ALM acts as a project management tool and HP QC acts as as test management tool.
Zephyr: Zephyr is one of the most widely used testing solution that offers valuable flexibility and collaborative capabilities to its users. This tool can be used to create test suites, test cycles, for testing, finding bugs, and more. It delivers streamline tracking capabilities along with real time reporting. Some of the important qualities of this tools are:
Integration with QA tools like JIRA, Selenium, QTP/UFT, Jenkins, etc.
Offers well-documented REST APIs for custom integration.
For automation integration it offers 2API.
Addresses dynamic and global needs in a variety of industries.
TestLodge: A popular online test management tool, TestLodge offers assistance in managing test plans, test cases, and test runs. It provides its users the flexibility work with any process, including traditional project management or agile methodology. With this tools one can automatically get tickets and bug reports when a test case fails. Other features of TestLodge are:
Offers impeccable customization.
Issue tracker integration with JIRA, Mantis, BugZilla, etc.
Manages team tasks with workload report.
Enables superior team collaboration, which allows you to keep your entire team in sync, irrespective of where they are located.
Tarantula Agile Test Management Tool: Tarantula Test Management Tool, developed by Prove expertise, is one of the best open source tool for testing management, including agile testing, reporting & usability. It is, completely free and licensed under GNU GPLv3. Its features are:
Management of cases along with executions and requirements.
Smart Tags for agile testing.
Dashboard for viewing report and status of the project.
Provides metrics in terms of requirement & testing coverage and failures.
TestCube: Testcube of Jatakasource is a web-based test case management tool, designed for the purpose of monitoring and amalgamation of enterprise-wide test cases. Some of its features are:
Complete package for managing the entire testing process, thereby diminishes the inconvenience of installation for separate application, needed for testing.
Instant access to data, through variety of dashboards, during administration of test cases.
Ease to access and share data across multiple teams.
Radi: Radi is a light weight, test director tool, which needs minimal number of simple operations by the users. It is built in Python and is best for storing and viewing the test results for the image or builds in less effort. Some of its features are:
Security features like authentication, login and password.
Supports test plans configuration.
Alternative option for maintenance of results in spreadsheets.
Reports are generated in compatible format.
Creates backup for every information such as test plans, results, etc.