The Seapine View

There were many updates to the blog in December. Here is our monthly recap:

Quality Matters: It’s in the Details – Small details can change your message and sabotage all of your planning and efforts.  Quality-centric ALM starts with Seapine.

Integrating QA Wizard Pro with TestTrack - This video shows the simplicity of integrating QA Wizard Pro with TestTrack and how to automatically create a defect when the script fails.

How to Make Sure Requirement Review Notes are Addressed - Provides information about how to properly address requirement review notes in TestTrack RM.

QA Wizard Pro 2011 Wins Jolt Productivity Award – QA Wizard Pro was recently awarded the prestigious Jolt Productivity Award in the testing and debugging category.

Integrating QA Wizard Pro with Surround SCM – This video describes the simplicity of archiving revisions and testing scripts when integrating QA Wizard Pro with Surround SCM.

Configuring Surround SCM Check Out Options – Provides a tutorial on how to switch between allowing all or only allowing exclusive users to commit changes to files in a development project.

Mac OS X Launch Shortcut in Surround SCM – Gives a brief tutorial on how to set a shortcut to launch the Surround SCM GUI for the Mac OS X.

Load Testing How To – Includes a PDF download on how to plan, record, modify, and run a QA Wizard Pro web load test script, and then analyze the results.

Is There a Place for Testers in an Agile World? – Describes Seapine’s thoughts on what you should do if you are struggling to integrate testing into your Agile process.

Open vs. Closed Workflow State Attributes – Gives a simple explanation of the difference between open and closed workflow state attributes in TestTrack.

QA Wizard Pro Remote Testing How To - Includes a PDF download on how to plan, create, configure, and run automated test scripts in QA Wizard Pro on remote computers.

You can use the remote testing features of QA Wizard Pro to run your scripts from multiple computers. Remote testing allows you to use any number of remote computers to distribute your automated testing scripts. For example, you can run a script from a remote computer with a 64-bit operating system installed when you have a 32-bit operating system installed locally.  The Remote Testing How To walks you through planning, creating, configuring, and running automated testing scripts from remote computers.

Download the Remote Testing How To now.

Most TestTrack workflows consist of several states, each representing a status in the process. Usually, several of these states are considered “open”, meaning more steps are needed before completing the item. Also, there are states that are considered “closed”, meaning that an item is finished when it reaches that state.

In TestTrack, open vs. closed is designated through the use of state attributes. Each state in the workflow must have a state attribute of either “Open” or “Closed”.

State Attributes

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Recently I gave a talk at the winter TestExpo in London about the role of testing as organisations move towards more Agile ways of working.

One of the main reasons I thought it would be an interesting topic to present was because of the dearth of material that exists on this subject. It seems to me that, while there is wealth of information available about how other roles need to change (e.g., project managers become Scrum Master, product managers become Product Owners, development teams become Scrum teams, etc.), no one is talking about what testers need to do.

So what is the answer? Is it the end of testing as we know it? Is it just me who is struggling with this? Have most organizations already happily integrated their QA function into the Agile process?

Continue reading…

The process of load testing a web application can be a daunting task for someone new to QA Wizard Pro or to load testing in general. This How To walks you through planning, recording, modifying, and running a QA Wizard Pro web load test script, and then analyzing the results.

Download the Load Testing How To.

I’ll come right out and say it, I’m a shortcut junkie. The more shortcuts I master, the more productive I become. This morning I realized that I needed a shortcut to launch the Surround SCM GUI. After a quick Google search I discovered that there are a lot of methods to do this, so I’m going to show you the one I found easiest. Continue reading…

There are two ways to run a development project:

1. Support concurrent/parallel development by allowing anyone to commit changes to any file at any time.
2. Prevent concurrent/parallel development, and the potential for merge complications, by requiring exclusive locks prior to committing changes.

The good news is that Surround SCM supports both models, with the check of a box.

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When working with automated testing scripts, the ability to archive revisions to a specific script can be a huge time saver. Version control of your scripts allows anyone to go back in time and see when, where, and why changes were made to a specific script, and revert to a previous version with just a couple clicks. QA Wizard Pro supports integration with a variety of popular source control tools, including Surround SCM.

Dr. Dobbs announced QA Wizard Pro 2011 won a Jolt Productivity Award in the Testing and Debugging category. For those of you new to Seapine, QA Wizard Pro is our automated functional testing and web load testing solution. Here is what Dr. Dobbs had to say about QA Wizard Pro 2011:

“Seapine Software’s QA Wizard Pro 2011 shines as a Jolt Productivity Award winner with features to make even the most experienced testing teams reach new levels of productivity. Web testing often presents challenges not found in other types of testing. QA Wizard Pro not only gives testers features, but also options. Scripting is open to third party tools, so teams can continue to leverage existing editors. Multi-language testing is also included as Unicode is supported.

Errors encountered during testing typically bring the testing effort to a halt — not so with this product. Continuous playback lets you essentially create “try-catch” blocks to handle errors — a familiar programming construct for developers. Comments can be added at test execution time and helps remove the guess-work from interpreting test results.

Validation is not limited to pixels and named components. Using QA Wizard’s powerful OCR feature, one can validate data from graphs, charts, and even Flash data, among others.

QA Wizard Pro is designed to integrate with Seapine’s suite of testing tools providing additional value not found in many standalone testing tools.”

Thank you Dr. Dobbs and congratulations to everyone at Seapine involved with making QA Wizard Pro an award-winning product!

In TestTrack RM, the default requirements workflow includes a Review Note event that reviewers use to provide feedback on individual requirements.

Before requirements are approved, it’s crucial to make sure all review notes are addressed. You can make this easier by adding a check box to the Review Note event, which users select after addressing a note. You can also create a filter to display requirements that still contain review notes to address. Users can apply this filter to quickly find requirements that need attention.
Continue reading…