Strategies for Successful Implementation of Test Management in Jira

Last updated on June 23rd, 2022 at 04:25 am

As the organizations are moving towards agile methodologies and continuous delivery cycles, it is crucial for them to compress release cycles without making a compromise on quality or incurring more costs. In such scenarios, a test management solution that supports and integrates well with the workflows of Jira and also keeps pace with the fast-evolving testing landscapes is necessitated.

Jira is an issue and project management software that is used by project teams in many organizations so that the development and testing processes can be seamlessly synced. The Jira test management tool is specially designed to bridge the communication gaps and to facilitate collaboration between teams. Particularly suited to the requirements and needs of agile and DevOps methodologies, the uses of Jira extend beyond mere issue tracking and project management of teams. This tool is widely used by organizations across the globe; as the agile techniques are gaining momentum in the software development industry, the user base of Jira software is growing at the same rate.

Key Uses and Benefits of Jira

Even though Jira is not designed and created to serve as a test management solution for business, the customization features and aspects lend itself to enhanced integration with test management tools. Normally, Jira is an integral part of the quality assurance processes, however, as a test management tool, teams are able to create projects, assign roles and responsibilities to the team members, create test plans and test cases, and generate reports in real-time. With the Jira test management tool at their disposal, the project managers and teams are equipped to achieve greater efficiency in the testing processes and streamline them as well.

One of the major benefits of using Jira in the form of a test management solution is that it integrates data and information from multiple sources and creates one platform for various teams across the organization. It facilitates the creation of a single workflow for the quality assurance and the development team so that everyone has the same understanding of the prevailing issues and the bottlenecks are minimized. With the help of this tool, the testing team is also able to easily create custom issue types and generate test cases. Using Jira means that the managers would be able to save a lot in terms of testing efforts, invested time, and costs as well as it’s an all in one platform; it not only generates custom test cases suited to the requirements of the projects but also allows the managers to track their progress.

Test Management Challenges of Jira

Despite the fact that Jira can be associated with all relevant issues and requirements and supports various custom issue types like user stories and test cases, aligning and reusing the test cases can prove to be a challenge for teams. Unlike other test management software, once an issue is resolved or a test case has been executed, it is marked as closed. Thus, if a team member wants to reopen it and convert it into the format of test cases, it requires a lot of effort, maintenance overhead. This is primarily because Jira was not initially designed to be a test management tool, instead, the focus was on issue tracking, organization, and project management. Even though the flexibility, agility, and customization features made it a useful tool for test case management, it still falls short when it comes to the re-usability and alignment of issue types. The process becomes increasingly complex and difficult to manage if there are more than one test cases which are associated with multiple user stories. Given that there is no built-in feature for test management, repeated test case execution, version control handling, and traceability reporting are also not supported by the Jira test management tool.  

Solutions

A Jira add-on basically is the internal integration of tools, which is required to augment the abilities of the existing test management solutions utilized by the project teams. It allows for better planning and organized assignment of test execution cycles. Not only does Jira manage to keep a check on the implementation history of the test cases, but it also enables the teams to organize the test cases into the appropriate folders easily. With the help of this tool, the managers can create reports for better visibility and a birds-eye view into the team productivity and test performance. Moreover, the ability of Jira to generate valuable test metrics, defect metrics, and test summaries make it indispensable for project teams.