the component or system being tested (the test object). Test management tools help to
gather, organize, and communicate information about the testing on a project.
Requirements management tools
Are requirements management tools really testing tools? Some people may say they
are not, but they do provide some features that are very helpful to testing. Because tests
are based on requirements, the better the quality of the requirements, the easier it will be
to write tests from them. It is also important to be able to trace tests to requirements and
requirements to tests, as we saw in Chapter 2.
Some requirements management tools are able to find defects in the requirements,
for example by checking for ambiguous or forbidden words, such as
‘might’, ‘and/or’,
‘as needed’ or ‘(to be decided)’.
Features or characteristics of requirements management tools include support for:
l
storing requirement statements;
l
storing information about requirement attributes;
l
checking consistency of
requirements;
l
identifying undefined, missing or
‘to be defined later’ requirements;
l
prioritizing requirements for testing purposes;
l
traceability of requirements to tests and tests to requirements, functions or
features;
l
traceability through levels of requirements;
l
interfacing to test management tools;
l
coverage of requirements by a set of tests (sometimes).
Incident management tools
This type of tool is also known as a defect-tracking tool, a defect-management
tool, a bug-tracking tool or a bug-management tool. However,
‘incident manage-
ment tool’ is probably a better name for it because not all of the things tracked are
actually defects or bugs; incidents may also be perceived problems, anomalies
(that aren
’t necessarily defects) or enhancement requests. Also what is normally
recorded is information about the failure (not the defect) that was generated during
testing
– information about the defect that caused that failure would come to light
when someone (e.g. a developer) begins to investigate the failure.
Incident reports go through a number of stages from initial identification and
recording of the details, through analysis, classification, assignment for fixing, fixed,
re-tested and closed, as described in Chapter 5. Incident management tools make it
much easier to keep track of the incidents over time.
Features or characteristics of incident management tools include support for:
l
storing information about the attributes of incidents (e.g. severity);
l
storing attachments (e.g. a screen shot);
l
prioritizing incidents;
l
assigning actions to people (fix, confirmation test, etc.);
l
status (e.g. open, rejected, duplicate, deferred, ready for confirmation test, closed);
l
reporting of statistics/metrics about incidents (e.g. average time open, number of
incidents with each status, total number raised, open or closed).
Requirements
management tool
A tool that supports the
recording of requirements,
requirements attributes
(e.g. priority, knowledge
responsible) and
annotation, and facilitates
traceability through layers
of requirements and
requirements change
management. Some
requirements
management tools also
provide facilities for static
analysis, such as
consistency checking and
violations to pre-defined
requirements rules.
Incident management
tool (defect
management tool)
A tool that facilitates the
recording and status
tracking of incidents.
They often have
workflow-oriented
facilities to track and
control the allocation,
correction and re-testing
of incidents and provide
reporting facilities.
164
Chapter 6 Tool support for testing
l
storing requirement statements;
l storing information
about requirement attributes;
l checking
consistency of requirements;
l
identifying undefined, missing or ‘to be defined later’ requirements;