This is the first post in a series of blog posts stepping through the process, metrics, and common traps you can fall into when testing. This blog specifically provides an introduction to agile testing strategies using Atlassian Bonfire and Enterprise Tester.
Meet The Tools
Bonfire and Enterprise Tester provide some great options for Agile testing with Jira. We’re really excited about both of them, so have thought we’d give you a roundup of the features and functionality available to all of you QA professionals out there. That’s everyone reading this!
Bonfire is a tool for QA teams, testers, and developers – or anyone, really – to rapidly file comprehensive bug reports directly from the web application they are testing.
Enterprise Tester allows QA teams, testers, and managers to easily manage test plans, execution sets, requirements, and incidents; all integrated with Jira.
While Bonfire files bugs fast, Enterprise Tester organizes test plans and their execution. We all need both types of testing in our projects, so using a combination of these tools allows greater quality to be achieved.
Why Testers Love Bonfire
We all know the pressure most Agile development teams endure as their release date gets closer.
It’s not uncommon for the QA team to be desperately under-staffed, while developers are cramming in last minute functionality and there is a growing mountain of bug fixes to verify. During this crunch time, the last thing testers need is to be slowed down by their tools.
“doing user testing of prototype this week, thanks @atlassian ; #bonfire is really speeding up the feedback/fix loop”
-@mifii via twitter
And that’s where Bonfire comes in. There are several key features making Bonfire an invaluable tool for anyone performing manual testing:
- In-App Bug Submission – Because Bonfire is a browser extension, you can quickly file a bug or feature improvement without ever leaving the web application you are testing.
- Multiple Annotated Screenshots – A picture is worth a thousand words and Bonfire instantly allows you to crop and annotate multiple screenshots of the page you are on with ease.
- Template Creation – Create bug report templates to quickly populate fields with both static and dynamic content and reduce the repetitive data entry that often bogs down manual testing. Templates are shared across browsers so testers can access them from each of their testing environments.
- Richer Test Sessions – Start a test session for any issue – be it a requirement, story, or another bug – and Bonfire will track every regression, new bug, or epiphany discovered during testing. All tester activity in the session is captured for easy linking and time reporting. You can also add testing Objectives, Tips, and Dev Leads for quick reference during your sessions.
- Supported Sub-Tasks – You can now collect the defects you found during a session directly as sub-tasks of the original story (or feature or bug) that you are testing. You can also create templates of Sub-Tasks for any project in Jira.
Bonfire let’s testers focus on what really matters – the quality of your software – and keep up with the speed of agile development.
Don’t just take my word for it, check out this quick demo: http://youtu.be/yVmIIULChkE
Why Enterprise Tester rocks!
With Enterprise Tester you can manage your testing, assign and execute tests, and record your results. As you do this quality metrics are automatically calculated, displayed in team dashboards, and published to Atlassian tools.
Agile development techniques mean frequent changes to User Stories; Enterprise Tester lets you manage these changes to ensure test coverage is retained throughout the project.
“Wow! I just want to thank you… I had no idea how powerful Enterprise Tester could be”.
– Test Manager, Liquid Capital
Enterprise Tester features allow you to get the most out of your QA team; allowing you to spend more of your time focused on delivering quality.
- Rich Quality Metrics and Dashboards – Get instant access to those critical metrics you need to manage quality with Enterprise Tester. You can also add charts to Jira, Confluence, and other development tools, using OpenSocial gadgets, giving you real-time access to all of your information on a single dashboard.
- Easy to See Test Coverage – Enterprise Tester combines your manual and automated tests to cover all of your User Stories. You can ensure that each User Story has been successfully tested and has no outstanding issues. With Enterprise Tester there is no more guess work – end-to-end traceability is at your fingertips.
- Test Planning and Organization – Create or reuse Test Cases across individual projects or your entire organization; plan Execution Sets and assign testers with ease, using our intuitive ‘drag and drop’ interface.
- Save Time and Money, Reuse – Share tests between teams, within projects, or across the entire organization.
- Real-time Integration with Jira– Jira User Stories and Issues instantly appear in Enterprise Tester, creating traceable test plans and coverage. Issues raised are automatically attached to your tests allowing developers to see the steps taken to reproduce – no more silos of information to slow you and your team down.
Enterprise Tester is a quality management platform, built by QA professionals for QA professionals to allow you to get more out of your test effort.
Check out a demo of Enterprise Tester: http://youtu.be/a6ntE1yJ3L0.
The Sweet Spot
Bonfire and Enterprise Tester together give Agile teams the best of both worlds. Bonfire makes everyone in the team a tester, allowing them to rapidly file comprehensive bug reports directly from the web application they are testing. Enterprise Tester brings structure to the testing process, providing quality assurance through test planing, execution, coverage metrics, and reports.
We’ll talk more about how you can use these tools together in the rest of the series. In the mean time, we’re excited that you can get testing with Jira!
Get Testing with Jira
Bonfire and Enterprise Tester both allow you to Get Started for $10. Try them free for 30 days.
Add Bonfire for Jira directly from the Universal Plugin Manager, or download it from the Atlassian Plugin Exchange. (Note: if you are currently running the Bonfire beta, follow the Beta Upgrade Instructions)
Enterprise Tester is available from the Enterprise Tester website or find us on the Atlassian Plugin Exchange. Find out about our ‘Total Testing’ bundle here.