Jira as a Test Case Management Software
Preface
Introduction
Moodle team uses Atlassian Jira as a Bug Tracker system. With a bit of tweaking Jira can become a Test Case Management software. For Moodle 2.0, we improved our QA department. We've been through testing a range of test management software that we could integrate to Jira. We tried more deeply Test Link, an open source software. It gave a us a good understanding of the basic Test Case Management software functionalities. Finally we decide to setup Jira for QA testing purpose. The main reason is that people working on Moodle are well familiar with Jira interface, and it will be easy for them to learn how to create, run test case, or generate report.
Jira and Test Case Management
Jira as a Test Case Management is attractive since it:
- Uses an existing and known tool
- Provides an easy way to link bugs to test cases and results
- Provides decent reporting of the state of testing
- Supports multiple releases
Scope of this document
This document describes how to install and setup Jira as a Test Case Management software.
Installing Jira (Linux)
Download the enterprise edition zip file on the Jira website. Extract the the files. Run jira-enterprise/bin/startup.sh. You should be able to connect to http://localhost:8080
Setup the entire Jira QA environment
Create a project
Create the QA environment
TestCase Issue Type
New custom fields
Test case screen
Test case screen scheme
Issue type screen scheme
Field configuration
Associate new Field configuration scheme to project
Create Test Case Execution sub-task
Issue Type
Screen
Screen scheme
Issue Type Screen Scheme
Field Configuration Scheme (associate Test Case Execution to TC field conf)
View Field Configuration
We need to finalize which field are going to be displayed on the which screens.
- Description:
- Summary:
- Affects Version
- Date Last Run
- Build Run Against
Status and Workflow
Status
Create three new status:
- Not Run (transition to Passed/Failed)
- Passed (transition to Not Run)
- Failed (transition to Not Run)
Workflow
Workflow Scheme
Associate project to Workflow
Add Timecharts plugin
- Download the Charting plugin http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA+Charting+Plugin
- Download the Timechart plugin http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/Timecharts
- Install the two file jar files into WEB-INF/lib
- Run shutdown.sh and startup.sh
Running a QA test cycle
Write Test Case
Create a task: Test Case
This will be created probably only once. It has to been written when you decide that your project get a new functionality. The description contains
Create a subtask: Test Case Execution
This will be created everytime you need to run a new bunch of test case. There should be a unique subtask by Affected Version, so we can generate correct report. The description of the subtask describes Steps and Expected Results. Note that these steps and expected results can be different in each substaks of a test case, if the affected versions should behave differently.
Run Test Case
Run a test
You should follow the steps from the subtask which is assigned to you.
Report a bug
If you encounter a bug, create a new issue and link the bug to this test case execution. Mark this test case execution as failed.
Read Report
Generate a report
When a QA report need to be created for the current state of a release, we search for all TestCase issues with the Affects Version field set to the required release. The resulting set of issues can then be sorted and counted by number passed, failed, not run etc. Producing historical reports can be done with the Timecharts plugin for Jira, which shows a graph of how the results in a report change over time.
Interpret the report
We created a new link type to connect test cases to the bugs that they created or are verifying. This is the biggest advantage that I see of using an issue tracker to track test cases and bugs together. TBD: we could also add a box to all bugs to indicate whether a Test Case is expected by someone for a bug.