Implement test analysis and reporting using IBM Rational Quality Manager

Introduction: This article provides an in-depth introduction to the use of Ibm®rational®quality Manager (RQM) for test analysis and generation of reports, and covers common problems that the test manager may ask. You can also learn how to use RQM to assist you in qualitative and quantitative analysis of test engineering and to provide analytical data.

Ibm®rational®quality Manager is a web-based quality management software that delivers integrated test plans and test assets for a complete software development lifecycle. The Rational Quality Manager is based on the jazz™ platform and can be used by test teams of any size. It supports a wide variety of user roles, such as test managers, test architects, test leaders, testers, and lab managers, as well as roles outside of the testing organization.

This article delves into the use of IBM Rational Quality Manager for test analysis and reporting, and covers general issues that the Test manager may raise. You will also learn how to use the data provided to assist you in qualitative and quantitative analysis of the test project.

Planning of the report

As with any tool, the information you get from Rational Quality Manager is just as good as what you entered. When you think about your company, your project, and the information you need to report, consider how you need to install and use Rational Quality Manager to get that information. Ask yourself the following questions:

How many tests do we plan to carry out, and how much have we done?

What are the remaining potential tests, and in what ways?

What is the speed at which our current tests were created, and what was it in the course of the project? How does the creation speed cross the test area or test case priority?

What is our current test execution speed and what was it in the course of the project? How does the execution speed burst across the test area or test case priority?

How much of our testing is focused on basic functions (basic requirements, primary functions, simple data, rather than public use cases (user, scenario, basic data, status, and error coverage) rather than stress testing (strong data, status, error coverage, load, and limited environment)?

How many of our tests are focused on performance, not other types of quality standards (performance, security, scalability, testability, maintainability, and so on)?

How much of our requirements are covered and how much code are we covering?

If it is applicable, what are the platforms and configurations we cover?

How many questions have we found, what are their security, where did we find them, and how do we find them?

Rational Quality Manager will not return to all of these issues, but it can solve many of these problems, and it can provide some information needed to answer other questions.

Set up and manage your needs

In many companies, demand coverage or traceability of requirements is a major focus of the testing process. Sometimes, it is to support application development requirements in the regulated industry. Other times, it is the standard to determine whether the team has done enough testing. Regardless of why you are interested in requirements coverage, if you want Rational Quality Manager to be able to help in this area, then you need to set up the work you want to do.

Managing and tracing requirements

If you are managing your requirements in an external tool, such as ibm®rational®requisitepro®, you can link that requirement to your test plan. If you do not use external tools, you need to manage the requirements in your test plan. In any case, after you have entered the requirements, you can associate them with a test case to trace the test script back to your requirements.

When requirements are changed or deleted, the status of requirements in Rational Quality Manager is updated to show the latest state. Test cases that contain the requirements for change or deletion are flagged so that you can quickly and accurately adjust your test plans and test cases to respond to requirements changes.