The Seapine View

If you’re new to TestTrack TCM or already use it, and want to learn better ways to manage your testing process, check out the TestTrack TCM Best Practices. This document covers:

• How TestTrack TCM items map to items from your manual test case management process.
• Suggestions for creating test suites and test run sets for better organization and meaningful reporting.
• When to create test cases and generate test runs.
• How to rerun failed tests.
• How to prepare for testing future releases.
• Which reports and live charts can help you accurately measure the progress of your testing effort.

Additional best practices were recently added for enhancements introduced in TestTrack TCM 2011.1, including new project options that can help you ensure tests meet compliance requirements or that your testing process is followed, and the ability share test case steps to maximize reuse.

One of my favorite new features in Surround SCM 2011.1 is bookmarking. I work on documentation for all of Seapine’s products and frequently access several different repositories to find the files I need to work on. When it gets closer to a product release date, I’m frequently checking files out and in to several different branches. Instead of (unsuccessfully) trying to remember where to find the files I need, I can now access them in just a couple of clicks.

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When I review TestTrack defects to address documentation requests or review product change requests that affect documentation, I typically look at the Overview tab first. This tab displays a read-only summary of the defect description, workflow events, and tracked emails. It helps me quickly see all the information related to the defect in one place and follow any discussion about the defect in sequential order.

Our development or QA teams typically enter a Comment workflow event to add feedback to defects instead of adding comments to the defect description field. This makes it much easier to follow the discussion thread because inline comments can get buried if a description is long.
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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.
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TestTrack’s cumulative flow chart and folder task board reports group items in a selected folder into Not Started, In Progress, Done, and Accepted categories. At first glance, you may think the categories are related to an item’s workflow state, but they are not.

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If you haven’t discovered the list window enhancements added in TestTrack 2010.1, you definitely should check them out. There are a lot of time-saving improvements, including the ability to customize list window text appearance, shortcuts for working with subsets of items, and more available data.

Keep reading to learn more about the 2010.1 release enhancements, then watch the Working with TestTrack List Windows video for a tour of TestTrack list windows.

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In Surround SCM, I tend to right-click branches, files, and repositories in the Source Tree view to perform actions. I quickly found that I only use a small number of the actions available by default on the shortcut menus, so I removed the commands I use less frequently and organized actions I do use in the order that makes sense for the way I work. You can customize your branch, repository, and file list shortcut menus in the Surround SCM user options.

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If you frequently copy and paste emails into TestTrack, you may want to use the TestTrack Outlook add-in to save yourself some extra work. The add-in allows you to create new defects, requirements, requirement documents, and test cases directly from a TestTrack menu in Outlook.
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TestTrack’s built-in time tracking features make it easy to manage estimates, get updates on actual and remaining effort, and gain insight from the data about project status. You can track and report on time for specific items or across all items in a project—all directly in TestTrack. For a quick introduction to time tracking, see How TestTrack Time Tracking Works.

Use the following tips to make configuring time tracking easier. After completing some pre-work, you can easily modify projects to implement time tracking the way you want to use it and test the configuration before users start entering time.

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TestTrack includes built-in time tracking features that make it easy to manage estimates, get updates on actual and remaining effort, and gain insight from the data about project status. You can track and report on time for specific items or across all items in a project—all directly in TestTrack.

Before you configure time tracking, it is important to have a basic understanding of how it works, including the available data, how values are captured and calculated, and where you can view the data.

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