Microsoft Test Manager – Test Impact

I just had to share this, Test Impact at it’s finest.

Working with a client on a brand new application that has Test Impact coming through as an angel on our shoulders. The recommended tests are really our regression tests, no questions about it.

This is a great example of the importance of automated unit tests for legacy code. The time spent up front can save time and money down the road. There are different ways to get test impact working like this for any project. It will take initiative and creative thinking.

Samples of what we are getting in Test Impact.

Build Test Impact Summary: image

 

Click Code Changes and see this:

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Example of the Compare Changes image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recommended Tests Cases in Test Manager

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Microsoft watch a live stand-up and parking lot meeting with the TFS Agile Product team

See how Microsoft’s TFS Agile Team do their scrum stand-up and parking lot meetings  Short video is the stand-up – Long video is the parking lot meeting.

I like the use of the Agile Board it is a nice visual that is missing in the standard stand-up meetings in most companies.

Scrum Stand Up

Another interesting video on using business value in a scrum project

Business Value in Scrum

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MTM Test Suite–add requirement

One option in Test Manager for Test Suite is “Add Requirement” which adds the Requirement ID and it’s title as a test suite. Example below:

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What happens if at a later date someone goes in and changes the title of the PBI?

First the change in the work item to the title does not show in your Test Suite. What has been added to Test Manager is an object on it’s own not a link to the actual work item. Think of it as a folder for tests related to your requirement.

What can I do?

There is the delete/add option however you will lose all test results associated to your test suite. When you delete a suite all test points contained within the suite are deleted. I would only use this when test execution has not happened yet for the test suite.

The rename option on a test suite can be used. Select test suite > right-click > Rename. In this option I would copy from the actual work item so the titles match.

How do you know there has been a change?

Often you don’t without someone telling you or finding by accident or creating a query to compare with. I’d like an alert that tells me when a Requirement title has changed and the Iteration Path. Both of these can affect the Test Plans and their Suites.

This happens in both MTM2010 and MTM2012.

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Agile in non-software environments

Many moons ago I blogged about agile being adapted by a school in the states. 

Colin Bowern passed on another interesting presentation called “Agile in the Bathtub

I thought I’d share another Microsoft fellow who has written and blogs about Agile not only at work but in your personal life. If your struggling with time management read J.D. Meier’s book “Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life”.  Meier’s blogs about Agile Results it is a must to read. In one  blog Meier’s explains how to use Evernote (a free application) as your Personal Information Assistant and become agile in all you do.

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ALM User Group in Toronto meets this Thursday, Nov 8th at 5:30pm

Come out on Thursday to the Toronto ALM User Group (TALMUG) click here to register. TALMUG

Be Loved By Your Development Teams: Using the Team Foundation Server – Project Server Connector

Organizations are investing heavily in building project management competencies through the improvement in processes and use of tools such as Microsoft Office Project Server to ensure the predictable and reliable delivery of projects. At the same time an increasing number of development teams are moving towards agile techniques. Integrating and reconciling development teams and project management has become extremely important. Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management strategy includes solutions designed to enable Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, and Project Server to connect together seamlessly.

This session will explore the Team Foundation Server - Project Server Integration Feature Pack and demonstrate how this enables development teams and project managers to work efficiently and increase productivity.

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Microsoft–Test Manager Certification Exam & More

Microsoft has just released their new certification exam for Software Testing with Visual Studio 2012. The exam number is 70-497

The skills and/or tasks covered in the exam are:

  1. Create and Configure Test Plans (31%)
  2. Manage Test Cases (34%)
  3. Manage Test Execution (35%)

Check out the details here and see Charles Sterling’s blog for additional information.

If you are interested we have a course on all these items that will help prep you for the exam.

Contact O# at 877-SO-SHARP

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Microsoft Test Manager–links to power tools

Test Scribea tool designed to export your Test Plan to word document. The test scribe template can be customized. Shai Raiten has two articles on how to customize.

How to customize test scribe template

Test Scribe – Developer Guide

Regular Expression Tester ExtensionParses regular expressions from your code, so you can modify and test them and insert the updated versions. Matches and groups are highlighted for an easy overview of exactly what captures your regular expression generates. Also allows you to save your regular expressions.

Silverlight Plugin - Using the Microsoft Visual Studio UI Test plugin for Silverlight, you can create Coded UI Tests or action recordings for Silverlight applications.

TFS Power Tools – blog by Brain Harry

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Microsoft Completed Build Deletion – where has our test results gone?

Did you know that the files and data that are part of a completed build can delete?

Did you know that the data deleted cannot be recovered?

Did you know by default Test Results from any automated tests run against the build are deleted by default?

If you have the right permissions you can right-click in Build Explorer on a completed build and select delete. When you do that by default all the items associated with that completed build are deleted.

·         Details: Information about the completed build that is displayed in Build Explorer. This information includes build steps, requestor, and date and time queued.

·         Drop: File and folders output by the build and copied to the drop location.

·         Test Results: Results of any automated tests executed during the build process or results of any test published against this build.

·         Label: The version control marker associated with the specific file versions used by the build process.

·         Symbols: The debugging symbols published to a symbol server during the build.

You can also configure the retention policy and set auto deletion rules . Nothing wrong with that however is the person responsible for the “Build” setup and maintenance deleting could be deleting Test Results?

There is an option that can be set to stop the deletion of your Test Results. 

Make sure your teams understands what happens when deleting completed builds. Set that option to keep your test results, unless you don’t want them!

 

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Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 RC

Microsoft patterns & practices has release Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 RC the guide describes how testing has been changing over the years and how Visual Studio 2012 RC helps us achieve continuous delivery. Just to get your interest here is a statement from the preface.

“Testing has always been the less glamorous sister to software development, scarcely noticed outside the software business, and the butt of complaints inside.”

I had the privilege of working on this book with the author’s as a contributor and reviewer.

Visual Studio 2012 RC is available.

VS Ultimate RC

Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management Virtual Machine and Hands-on-Labs / Demo Scripts

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Mobile Testing plugin to Visual Studio

A new Visual Studio plug in SeeTest for mobile testing. You can use Visual Studio (all versions) to test real physical phones including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. This includes Windows 8 phones. Just connect your device using a standard USB cable to your computer and record tests. SeeTest auto generates a script that you can copy & paste into Visual Studio. Then you can edit, run & view results in Visual Studio.

Check out Charles Sterling blog all about Visual Studio & SeeTest plugin. There is a video on Charles blog that you can watch.

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