Test Run

At some time today, January 11, 2006, Test Run was downloaded for the 500th time. I can’t help but give myself a tiny pat on the back. Test Run started as a small experiment is growing into a small company. It is almost hard for me to believe.

The single biggest feature request for Test Run has been for hierarchical test plans, or in other words, test case dependencies. Test case dependencies help streamline the test process by ensuring that QA engineers focus only on the tests that can be run. For example, imagine a sitation where test case A depends upon test case B. That means that test case A cannot be executed until test case B passes. Therefore, if test case B was executed, but failed, then test case A is “blocked” until test case B is re-executed and passes. In this state, there is no sense in an engineer even looking at test case A, right?

If that is at all confusing to you, then that is exactly why you need Test Run. Maintaining a dependency tree manually is cumbersome and tedious at best. Difficult enough that most organizations don’t bother tracking dependencies in such a way that they can be reported upon, or in such a way that QA engineers can track them while they execute their tests.

Test Run takes all the tedium and guess work out of managing test case dependencies. In Test Run, all one needs to do is identify a dependency, and Test Run manages the rest:

• Test Run provides an intuitive user interface for navigating dependency trees.
• Test Run prevents blocked test cases from being executed.
• Test Run highlights test cases that are blocking further testing progress.
• Test Run reports the percentage of blocked tests versus those that have not yet been run, or those that have been marked as failed or passed.

In the next couple of weeks Test Run Beta 8 will be released, and test case dependencies will form the centerpiece of the release. Development has already started, so if you have any additional feature requests, or particular questions or concerns about test case dependencies, now it the time. Leave a comment and let us know.