The Seapine View

TestTrack 2009.0 was released on February 5, 2009!

Whether you need to do release planning for your next Agile project, know where you stand with the issues assigned to you, or share status information with management, you’ll find something in TestTrack 2009 to love.

This release contains significant new features and enhancements to support your TestTrack reporting needs as well as scalability, usability, and performance improvements.

Check out what’s new and download TestTrack 2009 today!

Here’s a roundup of recent TestTrack knowledgebase activity. It’s worth giving this list a quick look in case one of these articles applies to your particular situation.

New Articles

• Upgrading to the 64-bit TestTrack Server provides steps to complete before and after upgrading the 32-bit TestTrack Server to the 64-bit version. Also check out this related article: 64-bit TestTrack Server Requirements.

• Updating Customized TestTrack Web Pages to Support Access to Multiple TestTrack Servers explains required modifications for customized TestTrack Web pages when multiple TestTrack Servers are used (also known as cross server login).

• Using Server Parameters in SoloSubmit and Using Server Parameters in TestTrack RSS Feeds explain how to specify SERVERADDR, SERVERPORT, and SERVERNAME parameters in URLs to support TestTrack Web cross server login.

Updated Articles

• TestTrack Client System Requirements

• TestTrack Server Application System Recommendations

• Supported Linux Distributions

Thanks to Amy Kearns for providing the information about the knowledgebase updates!

Yours truly was recently interviewed about test case management for the Sticky ToolLook eNewsletter, published by the folks at StickyMinds.com and Better Software magazine.

In this month’s Sticky ToolLook, Paula Rome answers some questions about the advantages of test case management software, the importance of committing to test case documentation, and how a good test management tool can help you to “Go where the testing leads you.”

I was asked the following three questions:

• What are some of the advantages that software made specifically for test case management brings to the table?
• What are some situations in which an organization might want to integrate a test management tool?
• What can a test case management tool do for a tester in terms of managing the test results?

You can read my answers here.

Let me know how you would have answered the questions!

I’m pleased to announce that we have released TestTrack 2008.2 today!

There are many new features and enhancements in 2008.2 that will save you time and make you more productive. I’ll be focusing on some of my favorite features in upcoming blog entries, but for now you can check out the What’s New page to see the highlights.

[Pssst…. Check out the new Interactive Filters!]

I’d like to give a special thanks to our wonderful TestTrack beta users. We got some great feedback from you guys that we were able to incorporate into this release. Keep the good ideas coming!

I was recently interviewed by Mike Lippis for the Outlook Series. Listen to the interview.

Mike was interested in my perspective on test case management and issue tracking. As you might expect, I was pretty shy about talking about the advantages these types of tools bring to software development teams. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to listen to the entire interview in one sitting.)

Just out of curiosity, how would you answer these questions?

• Can you answer the question “Are we ready to ship today?” the same day you ask the question?

• Are you confident that your testers and developers are focusing their efforts on the highest priority tasks?

• Do you know if the product you shipped has all of the features your stakeholders asked for? Can you prove it to auditors?

If you didn’t answer yes to all of these, then you are a good candidate for adding an integrated test case management and issue tracking solution to your development tool arsenal. And I just happen to know of a great solution!

Check out TestTrack Studio today. You won’t be sorry.

I warned you.

In my first post to this blog I promised that I would occasionally discuss a topic whose only redeeming value would be bringing a little fun to a stressed out day. This is one of those posts.

I’d like to share a fun web site I recently discovered, Cooking for Engineers. Some of you who’ve had the misfortune of eating something cooked by me might at first be surprised (and a little alarmed) that I was exploring a cooking site.

Guest: Mmmm…, er, what is it?

Me: It’s an experiment. It’s something new!

Guest: There’s a lot of it, isn’t there?

Me: Fine. I’ll order pizza.

But Cooking for Engineers does a good job of summing up its appeal.

“Have an analytical mind? Like to cook? This is the site to read!”

If you appreciate a well-written, reproducible bug report or delight in a tester independent test case, then I strongly suspect you will enjoy this site. Check out the recipes for English Toffee, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Barbecue Pork Ribs. There’s hope for me yet!

Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the recipes. That’s where you’ll find a novel way of representing a recipe’s steps and ingredients. You won’t want to go back to a normal recipe format again! (BTW, let me know if you explore using this format to model process oriented test cases.)

Thanks to Jeff for introducing me to Cooking for Engineers. Don’t worry. I won’t bring anything I cook into the office.

Did you know that you can use folders to bookmark items in TestTrack ?

Just like you can bookmark a favorite page in your web browser, TestTrack’s folders let you keep track of your favorite issues, defects, test cases, and test runs. OK, so maybe favorite isn’t the word you would use to describe these types of items, but the fact remains that it’s awfully darn convenient to be able to quickly file away special items so they are easy to find later.

There are lots of situations where this can come in handy.

• Say you are in the middle of prioritizing newly entered bugs and there are one or two that you want to come back to after you’ve done a little research.

• It’s time to do some release planning and you want to tag items for the next maintenance release.

• The defect you are reviewing seems familiar to you, but your next meeting is about to start. Bookmark the issue so you can do a search for similar items when you get back from the meeting. Maybe you will want to merge or link the related issues.

Since TestTrack lets you file an item in more than one folder, you have lots of flexibility to organize issues in ways that make sense to you.

What do I have to do?

Create a folder (or multiple folders if you want to get fancy) that will contain your bookmarked items. Check out this Folders Wiki article for more details.

That’s it. Now you are ready to use the Add to Folder… command when you want to add items to your bookmark folder!

Thanks to one of our great TestTrack customers, Dave Kellogg, CSDP, Software Engineer, The Raymond Corporation, for suggesting I do a blog entry on this topic!

This is a gentle reminder to all of you Software Test & Performance subscribers that the deadline to vote for TestTrack Pro and TestTrack TCM in the 2008 Testers Choice Awards is rapidly approaching.

Voting closes on July 30. You should have already received your online ballot from ST&P. Only current subscribers are eligible to vote.

The winners will be announced at the Fall 2008 Software Test & Performance Conference, September 24 – 26, 2008, in Boston.

Fernando Cremer, one of the terrific Solution Consultants in our Services group, has created a very interesting sample application that can answer this question. It shows the changes in the source files associated with a list of issues. Notice I said changes in the source files, not just the list of files that have changed.

You might find Fernando’s application handy when you are getting ready to promote changes to production, or you want to do a quick review of what went into the latest build, or when you want to satisfy your curiosity about which code review “suggestions” were actually followed.

Sample report output

The SCC_File_Diff_Report_Utility takes advantage of the integration between TestTrack Pro and Surround SCM. It uses TestTrack’s SOAP interface and Surround SCM’s Command Line Interface (CLI) to do its magic. If you are so inclined, Fernando has kindly made the SCC_File_Diff_Report_Utility source code available on the Seapine Labs site so you can make this report look however you want.

Seapine Labs

Speaking of which, Seapine Labs at http://labs.seapine.com/ is a very useful site to bookmark. It has lots of interesting tips and ideas that can expand your usage of Seapine products. It’s an incubation site that lets us share our experiments and works in progress with users. One warning. This is not production code! Use what you find, learn from it, but please don’t get upset if you find bugs.

I’ll be covering other interesting stuff from the TestTrack section of Seapine Labs in future posts. Surround SCM users should check out Life on Mars, courtesy of Jeff Amfahr, Surround SCM’s product manager, for additional Seapine Labs goodness for Surround SCM users.

Hey, have you created an interesting TestTrack SOAP application? Even if you can’t share your source code, we’d love to hear about what you’ve done!

So you are using an industrial grade defect tracker and you’ve been following the good practice advice of writing up all issues reported about your software. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, “a bug’s a bug, no matter how small.”

Congratulations!

You know that all of the issues that could potentially hurt your project are safely stored in one place. Pat yourself on the back and take a moment to enjoy the peace of mind that following this good practice can bring.

You have removed a non-trivial source of anxiety related to your efforts to deliver high quality software. The fear that bugs are lurking, waiting to appear right after you ship can be a big source of stress. And while worrying about bugs that haven’t been discovered yet is bad enough, it’s particularly galling to have a project schedule slip at the last minute or have an embarrassing (and costly) glitch at a customer site due to a bug that someone had already identified — but failed to mention.

You know the scenario. Your team is gathered at one end of the table in the big conference room with the sales guy and executive managers at the other end.

Exec (wearing a suit and a frown): “How could we ship and not know about this bug?”

Someone from your end of the table: “But we did know about it. I saw the problem on my machine two months ago. I was sure someone would fix it.”

Grrrrr…

I believe there is a special place reserved for people who discover bugs and don’t write them up. And that place is really, really hot, has no central air, internet access, or pizza delivery service.

Talk to your team at the next project meeting. Send out a reminder in a Project_All email. Make it a game (award bonus points and chocolate for reporting defects — double points for the most critical bug found this week). However you do it, make sure your project culture values identifying and documenting issues.

You know your team has embraced this good practice when you overhear one of the developers say to the tester who wrote up the bug report, “Hey, thanks for finding this one before a customer did.”