HP Quality Center - Best Practices

1.Introduction

Quality Center is a test management tool which provides very good features for managing both your manual and automated test cases. This paper highlights the best practices for managing your test cases.
When you open Quality center, depending on your rights it display the below mentioned option in the sidebar:
1. Requirements
2. Test Plan
3. Test Lab
4. Defects
5. Dashboard

2.Requirements

When you have assigned with the responsibility of developing your test cases in the quality center then you must be wondering where to start with. I am going to share my experience to overcome such a situation.
You need to find the solution of some question before you start writing your test cases.
1. Is your requirement developed and available?
2. Is your requirement organized in a logical sequence?
If answer to both of the above question is Yes, then you can start with Requirement option in the side bar. In case your requirement is under development, then you keep your requirement updated in Quality Center alongwith your test cases.
Develop a folder structure based on the logical sequence of the requirement. For e.g. if your requirement document consists broadly below mentioned section, then create the same folder structure in your Quality Center Requirement module.
1. Use Cases
2. User Interface
3. Business Rules
4. Report Specification
The above are your folder name under a root directory which can be the name of your project or product.
You then start creating the requirement under these folders structure and provide logical and relevant name to each of your requirement. For e.g. if my requirement has say use cases for say Login, Landing Page etc. Then the Use Cases and other folder must contain these requirements. An illustration is given below:
1. Use Cases
Login
Landing Page
2. User Interface
Login
Landing Page
and so on…

3.Test Plan

Once you are through with your requirement, then you start writing test cases. The best way to write test cases is to refer the use cases, user interface, business rules and report specification. These sections help one to develop various scenarios for use cases.
Always think of all possible scenarios and then start documenting those scenarios as per your requirement.
So now you focus your attention on Test Plan module of QC. Here you are going to create the folder structure in logical sequence. The best way to define a logical sequence is to understand the use cases. Your use cases are going to assist in developing the logical sequence and your test scenarios. For e.g. referring my previous example of Login I can think of various test scenarios like
1. Valid Login
2. Invalid Login
3. Authentication and Authorization
4. Server down while login
5. Improper shut down in last successful login
In a similar way you can think of valid scenarios depending on your requirement. These Test Scenarios are going to be your test cases in Quality Center.
An illustration of your folder structure in Test Plan module is given below:
1. Your Project or Product Name
Login
Valid Login
Invalid Login
Authentication and Authorization
Server down while login
Improper shut down in last successful login
Now you must be wondering where we are going to provide the test steps for each scenarios or test cases.
You are going to create your test step for each test scenario. Before that you have to provide the details about the Scenarios in terms of objective, pre-requisite, pre-condition, assumptions and anything important and relevant.
The test scenarios should be completed when you have provided below mentioned detail in Quality Center- Test Plan module.
1. Details
2. Design Steps
Apart from above you can also provide other details like attachments. You can also map your test scenarios with previously developed requirement and defects (once you executed the test scenarios). This you can do using the Req Coverage tab & Linked Defects) available in QC after creating the test scenarios.

4. Test Lab

After completing the test scenarios, the next step is the execution of your test scenarios. The execution sequence can be built in Test Lab module of the Quality Center.
In the test lab module you add your test scenarios that is planned to be executed. Here you are creating a Test Set. A Test Set normally covers a full use case. It is not necessary that you are going to execute all the test scenarios in one go. As I mentioned it is going to depend on your project plan and development lifecycle followed. If you are following Iterative cycle, then only test scenarios relevant to that Iteration is going to be added by you in the Test Lab module.
For example, I have 3 iteration for my project and only Login use case is going to deliver in Iteration 1, then I am going to execute only Login Test Scenarios in Iteration 1. It may be possible that not all the test scenarios of Login is fully functional, then you have to take only those Test Scenarios from Login which have been developed and needs to be tested. An illustration of the same is given below:
Suppose Test Scenarios Server down while login, Improper shut down in last successful login are not yet developed, then one is only going to add below mentioned test scenarios in the Test Lab
1. Your Project or Product Name
Login – (Test Set)
Valid Login
Invalid Login
Authentication and Authorization
I have not added the 2 scenarios in my Login test set as these are not yet developed. The decision for adding the Test Scenarios in the Test Set can be taken mutually with your Project Manager or Test Manager.

5. Additional Information

Last but not the least, Defect module consists all your defects either entered manually or created automatically based on failed test cases or scenarios.
Dashboard shows your Test Progress and help in managing your risk.
At any point of time you can find whether all your requirement have been covered, tested or not just by looking the Requirement module. This module shows the status of each use cases in terms of Covered, Not Covered, Passed or Failed.

6. Your Opinion

Any additional input to this paper is most welcome. Please feel free to write me at sachin.vasudha@gmail.com in case of any query
You can also download a copy of this article from http://sachin.vasudha.googlepages.com/HPQualityCenter-BestPractices.pdf