About Test Director

Introduction

This document gives an overview of the usefulness of the tool Test Director by Mercury Interactive Corporation, USA for testing and testing related activities. This document describes the features of the Test Director in brief.

Test Director is a web based application and is a product of Mercury Interactive Corporation, USA. The tool can be used for logging the test related details efficiently. The tool facilitates to store all the details required for testing vs. Requirements, Test cases, Test Execution Details, Defect Details, Test reports and Graphs.

Test Director – Functionality Classification

The Test Director functionality is divided into 4 different stages. They are the following.

Requirements

Test Plan

Test Lab

Defects

Requirements

The requirements functionality provides facility to store the requirements. This facility enables one to easily go through the requirements as and when needed. The requirements functionality provides facility to import the requirements details present in documents with the help of the installation of suitable Plug-In. The requirements could be stored in the form tree structure which will be helpful for segregating the requirements in a meaningful way

Test Plan

The Test Plan functionality enables one to store all the test cases that need to be executed.
The test cases can be partitioned in separate folders. The test cases stored in the test plan could be mapped into the requirement list present in the requirements tree so that it is easy to analyze whether all the requirements present in the product are covered by means of test cases.

Test Director supports facility to store various details about the test cases along with the actual test case description like Creation date of the test case, Description of the test case, Designer name of the test case, Execution status of the test case, Modification details of the test case, Test case reviewer details, Test case reviewed date etc.

Along with each test case attachments can also be made. Attachments of documents related to the functionality tested by the test case, or images of type bmp, jpeg or any kind of images that will give more clarity for tester to carry out the execution of the test case can be stored as attachment for every test case.



Test Lab

The test lab provides facility to run the test cases and enter the results of the test cases. The test cases could be run manually or it can schedule for an automatic run also.

Defects

The defects functionality in the Test Director provides the following details about the defects found vs. Actual fix time i.e. the time in hours within which the defect was fixed, Assigned to details, Closing Date, Closed in Version, Defect ID, Description, Detected by, Detected in version, Detected on Date, Estimated Fix Time, Modified, Planned Closing Version etc.

Reports

The test reports provide facility to generate reports in document form. Reports could be generated for any of the above mentioned functionality vs. Requirements, Test Plan, Test Lab, Requirements – Test Plan mapping details, Defects details etc to name a few.

Graphs

Test Director supports generation of graphs. Requirements summary graph, Test planning progress graph, Test Execution summary graph, Defects status trend graph are few of the graphs supported by the Test Director.

Database

The project details present in the test director could be stored in any databases like Microsoft Access, Sybase, Microsoft SQL, and Oracle.

E-Mail

Test Director provides facility for E-Mailing the Requirements, Test Cases, Defects or whatever details present in the Test Director to one or more persons of the team. This feature enables the tester to send the testing results to the any the team member or to all the team members immediately once the testing is over.

Document Generation

Test Director provides functionality called Document Generator by which all the contents of the Test Director could be generated in the document form.

TestDirector Delivers Consistency and Savings

After surveying the playing field for testing solutions, Superpartners chose TestDirector based on the product’s functionality and Gartner’s positive vendor rating of Mercury.
“The key decision making criteria for TestDirector was its ability to modify our testing methodology to obtain significant cost savings,” said Mr Evans. “TestDirector allows us to understand exactly where we are in the testing process so we can more accurately control costs and put our energy into ensuring we meet any hard deadlines (and avoid any non-compliance costs).”
Previously, test cases were created and administered using Microsoft Word. While this was adequate when the test team was a small stable group looking after a single core application, once Superpartners moved to multiple applications across multiple platforms and the associated growing IT department, this proved to be inadequate. TestDirector has helped Superpartners manage test cases more effectively by improving the ability to locate and re-use them. By maintaining all test information in a central repository, the test team can easily re-use entire test plans or initial test cases for future application releases and even emulate real-life business processes. More importantly, the consistent, repeatable approach for managing test cases has facilitated process change within the Superpartners test team and resulted in increased visibility of test status across the IT department’s body of work.
Recently, the organisation introduced the use of TestDirector for User Acceptance Testing. This has widened the scope to provide a testing framework and methodology to end-users. As testing is not always undertaken by the same end-users, TestDirector’s user-friendly interface and its central repository of test cases has simplified the process and added a degree of efficiency attained by re-using test cases.
Supporting high levels of communication and collaboration, TestDirector is also facilitating information access across the organisation. Its approach to gathering requirements, planning and scheduling tests, analysing results and managing defects and issues ensures all stakeholders can contribute to the quality process to deliver applications that meet end-user needs.