While developers can sprint from idea to implementation in a matter of days, QA has struggled to keep up with this rapid pace due to a lack of standard test management software tools. The ability to track software requirements across the full software development lifecycle including testing and verification is often the missing piece in most organizations, and when an organization adopts the right test management software tool, it drives real acceleration.
Test management software manages the intersection between software requirements, defect tracking, and test plans. When a development team delivers a new feature or fixes a new bug, it is test management software that allows management to track the progress of verifying and validating that software requirements have been tested.
Without the right test management software tool, developers and project managers are forced to track quality in a series of manual spreadsheets. Features implemented are tracked against a series of ad-hoc tests and test plans. Instead of achieving a process that can scale across multiple departments and development groups, this manual testing reconciliation effort requires an endless number of meetings and a series of subjective checkpoint calls where QA discusses how “confident” they are in a given software release. In other words, manual testing involves passing around time-consuming Excel spreadsheets and making subjective calls about how “tested” a given software feature is.
Needless to say, this manual testing approach doesn’t scale. If you are looking to upgrade your test management practice, use test management software that can inspire confidence using real data. When you use the right test management software, you can combine data from your issue management systems with data from your continuous delivery pipelines and integration testing tools. The readiness of a given software release becomes something that can be measured with a tool rather than something you’ll be discussing with QA during a release discussion.
If you’ve worked in a large organization, you understand how dangerous it is to make release decisions based on how a developer or how a QA engineer “feels” about a given software feature or release. When millions or billions are on the line, you’ll want to use a test management software tool that makes your release decisions data-driven and objective.
Originally published at www.plutora.com on February 8, 2017.
