Microsoft Impact award given to ObjectSharp

It was a great evening for ObjectSharp Consulting last night. At the Microsoft Impact awards ObjectSharp partners Dave Lloyd, Barry Gervin and Mike Green accepted the

 Partner of the Year award for Application Lifecycle Management.

Congratulations to Objectsharp and the Sharpe's.

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Test Case customization by Dave Lloyd

The test case work item has a tab that lists the requirements/user stories that the test case tests. However, bugs related to the test case are not part of the listing. Dave has come up with a customization that changes the test case tab to include bugs created against the test case. With this customization you will see all work items that the test case tests.

Read Dave’s blog for more details and how to do the customization.

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Microsoft TFS and QTP integration

If you do not have a profile on LinkedIn it is time to join. There are amazing groups that are sharing information, posting questions & getting answers for a lot of different topics.

On the Visual Studio ALM User Group Anna shared a blog she posted  “How to integration TFS and QTP

Other LinkedIn groups related to TFS are:

  • Visual Studi0 2010 Testing
  • Microsoft Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server (Team System)
  • Microsoft TFS/VST Customization Experts
  • Microsoft Testing Visual Studio 2010
  • Microsoft Coded UI

There are also Agile groups:

  • Agile Testing
  • Agile Toronto

This in no way is a compete list.

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Microsoft Test Manager– test plan confirgurations

If your looking for a way to create test configurations that can be used in all your team projects check out Dave Lloyds blog. Dave explains how to edit the process template to add or change test configurations.

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Microsoft Test Manager - test case work item customizations

Check out this MSDN blog about a company that is using Test Manager for their automated testing. They have customized the Test Case work item to capture information about what test suite the test belongs too, added test categories like Smoke Test, and test execution statistics. They have added a command line program that updates the TFS TCM periodically updating the information in these new fields.

At the end of the blog is TfsTestcaseUpdaterSample that you can download.

Share you idea’s by adding comments on other ways to customize the Test Case work item to help gather information that can be queried.

I will post any idea’s so stay tuned. 

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Microsoft vNext preview has been released as of yesterday

Microsoft vNext was released yesterday at BUILD and is available on MSDN if you have a subscription. The released name is Visual Studio 11. There is lots of new stuff for the developer’s but of interest to me and likely anyone following my blog is the Agile features shown in the diagram below. The Exploratory Testing tool is very cool as is the Feedback tool. What am I saying it is all cool.

Check out more information on each of these items here.

Visual Studio 11

image

Stay tuned I will do my own review of these tools for you in the days to come.

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The 10 Minute Test Plan by Jim Whittaker

Jim Whittaker recently wrote an article called The 10 Minute Test Plan. It is a must to read. If you’ve been in testing where you had to write a Test Plan you will be grinning as you read and nodding you head.

To get your interest here is the first 2 paragraphs of Jim’s article:

Anything in software development that takes ten minutes or less to perform is either trivial or is not worth doing in the first place. If you take this rule of thumb at face value, where do you place test planning? Certainly it takes more than 10 minutes. In my capacity as Test Director at Google I presided over teams that wrote a large number of test plans and every time I asked how long one would take I was told “tomorrow” or “the end of the week” and a few times, early in the day, I was promised one “by the end of the day.” So I’ll establish the task of test planning to be of the hours-to-days duration.

As to whether it is worth doing, well, that is another story entirely. Every time I look at any of the dozens of test plans my teams have written, I see dead test plans. Plans written, reviewed, referred to a few times and then cast aside as the project moves in directions not documented in the plan. This begs the question: if a plan isn’t worth bothering to update, is it worth creating in the first place?'

The Ten Minute Test Plan

The nice thing about using Microsoft Test Manager is my test plan is built in and I can update it as things change. I can use Test Scribe to output it to a word document is anyone does want to really read it.

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Microsoft Test Manager–control recognition, plus supported configurations & platforms.

Some controls are not recognized without added help. You need to make sure that the controls being added to the solution by development are first compatible and second have be referenced so that they are recognizable by MTM.

Silverlight Control recognition:

How to setup up your Silverlight Application for Testing instructions.

Set a Unique Automation Property for Silverlight Controls for Testing

Testing WPF application check this out.

Supported configurations and platforms for Action Recordings and Coded UI Tests check this out.

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Microsoft Test Manager–enable event log

If you are having issues with Test Manager make sure you have downloaded the hot fixes and feature pack in the order below:

Hot Fix for MTM :

  1. 1. KB2387011
  2. 2.  KB2403277
  3. 3. Feature Pack 2 (MSDN download)

4. Expression Encoder with SP1 (video recording)

If you are still experiencing issues enable tracing to isolate any issues:

Check out this site for enabling tracing.

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Microsoft Test Manager (MTM)– binding parameters

  1. Those of you who like to use your mouse be aware when binding parameters to input fields. After getting your parameter value you cannot go to the input field and right click then select the Paste option.
  2. Reason: the action recording recognizes and records this action as a mouse click action.

You have to use CTRL+V or you can just type the value into the input field.

After entering the value (either way above) you have to remove focus from that field. I find tabbing works 95% of the time or clicking in a white space.

If your parameter does not get marked as bound try again. Remember, parameters only work with input fields. They will not work on controls like radio buttons at this time.

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