VS2010 TMap Testing Template | The Test Infrastructure
Initial Work Items #2 Setting up and maintaining the test infrastructure, beside the Initial Work Items #1 which describe / help create the Master Test Plan, also activities for setting up the environment must take place at the early stage of the project.
The test infrastructure consists of the facilities and resources necessary to carry out the testing satisfactorily. A distinction is made between the facilities for test execution (test environments), for supporting the testing (test tools) and for the day-to-day work of the testers (workplaces).
While it doesn’t look like rocket science, just setting up an environment, most projects lack a good structure for these activities resulting in time loose and poor quality.
The TMap for VS2010 process template helps with setting up the infrastructure by providing 6 initial work items, with specific guidance, discussing the TMap activities within VS2010 ,which covers Lab Management and Test Manager.
Together with the initial work items and the guidance also three checklists are added to help.
VS2010 TMap Testing Template | Initial Work Items #1
During the unfolding of the TMap for VS2010 process template, several pre-defined work items are created for the test organization. These work items helps the test organization to start structured test process with a Master Test Plan.
When starting a testing effort first several things needs to be in place… we need to understand the assignment, determine what we are going to test what are the risks, etc… the first four steps in the image below.
Beside these steps also decisions needs to be taken about what to test where, you don’t want to loose money by testing things twice. As described in the TMap Next book:
The type of system and/or development approach and/or test policy determine which forms of which test levels are best used. For iterative system development, for instance, a thorough acceptance test is less obvious. This is because the quality from the user perspective has already been tested in previous test levels. However, for package implementations there is a far greater emphasis on a thorough acceptance test. The risks here are focused on the implementation of the package in the organization, a typical acceptance test aspect.
So, topics covered by the master test plan can be:
All these activities are described in detail in the TMap Next book, and you also get these steps when using the TMap for VS2010 process template, as initial work items.
These Master Test Plan activities got descriptive guidance attached to it. Accessible by using Microsoft Test Manager 2010, Visual Studio 2010 or the TFS 2010 Web Access tool, helping every role, to understand the assignment, the activities and test goals.
[Microsoft Test Manager 2010 | Initial Master Test Plan Work Items with guidance]
[Visual Studio 2010 | Initial Master Test Plan Work Items with guidance]
[ TFS 2010 Web Access | Initial Master Test Plan Work Items with guidance]
So, when the project starts the guy / girl with the Test Manager role has to assign the different tasks to the right team members to complete the Master Test Plan.
In a following post [probably not the next one] some Word and Excel templates which support these tasks and can be found at the project portal. First a planned post about initial work items for planning the infrastructure.
If you want to keep up to date about TMap testing and the VS2010 process template, send me an email with your name and organization
. Beside this blog and our the TMap codeplex site we have a community of users, to exchange ideas, usages stories and additional updates of the template en testing practices.
TMap for VS2010 Testing Process Template RC published on Codeplex.
A bit later as planned, due to my broken leg.
Just checked in the RC version of the TMap for VS2010 process template…
Downloaded it from TMap.Codeplex.com.
Still a lot of work to do, specially on the documentation and reporting part [lucky me, my colleagues from Sogeti US, Sweden and other Sogeti countries are helping me]. But still, the documentation section is a very good starting point when you want to discover the TMap processes for VS2010.
Later this week I will post some more content.
Traceability in VS2010
Always an interesting question, how does traceability work in VS2010?
To often asked without any context, or only asked from a requirements perspective. Still way too open to answer in a tweet. So, a post to canalize those questions a little bit more…
[see the image below for the numbers]
you can take two directions when talking about traceability. The first is focused on “work”, the work items repository part of TFS [on the left side of the green dotted line]. with work related traceability we can answer questions like “did we completed all tasks for that requirement?” [for more see the red list]. Information which is very important for every roll in the Application Lifecycle. A tester want to know if he can start testing, so he want to see if the developer is ready. A project manager wants to plan the work. Developers want to know if designers are ready to start with a stabile set of needs… and many more. All work related information, and information which can be tracked/ traced by using work item and its repository.
VS2010 main capability for work related traceability are the TFS work item repository [see image below from MSDN] and linking of work items, setting up a hierarchy.
We can breakdown requirements, or user stories, in tasks. 
tasks that needs to be executed to get the requirement done. These tasks can have a parent-child relation [and other see Working with Link Types on MSDN]. Giving us the information we need in any kind of way, for example reports.
So far the work related traceability. The other kind of traceability is based on artifacts, things we make during the application lifecycle, I will call them ALM artifacts. ALM artifacts are used to create the solution/ application. For example the source, XAML and configuration files which make the solution. But, also the diagrams which we created to make a correct, consistent and good communicated application architecture, we use them to drill down from the needs to code. And also test cases belong to the things we make during the application lifecycle [I can imaging when you get confused now, test cases are within VS2010 work item types, but they definitely belong to the artifacts section].
Use case – user story what is the difference… I often use both [see this piece of MSDN documentation for modeling requirements]. User stories are work item types and use cases are ALM artifacts. So, they are a great bridge between the ‘work-world’ and ‘artifact-world’. The good thing is the capability of VS2010 to link diagrams, and other model elements to work items. [How to: Link Work Items to Model Elements], this give us the capability to create a trace.
From the description and diagrams of the requirements, the often called problem domain, we have to make a big jump into the solution domain.
Diagrams are created like the component diagram and layer diagrams visualizing the high level pieces of the solution with the dependency and interfaces between these components and layers. [used this image in this post; the modeling world].
It is also a big gap for traceability, to get this a little bit better a solution can be the replaying of scenarios written down in the user stories and drawn in activities as described in this post; VS2010 Modeling; Create Lifeline from Component.
A trace back from component/layer to requirement can be a link from model element to the user story work items in where he is used. Never did this, it’s a manual process and probably people will forget the links, maybe with some kind of notification this would be valuable…
An interesting VS2010 capability is the connection between the layer diagram and the sources. This makes a trace possible between the high level design and the sources. See image below.
Because test cases are work item types in VS2010 they can be connected to any other ALM artifact, giving us the possibility to connect for example test cases to use case diagrams. Easier to accomplish and to maintain is the connection with test tasks and corresponding user story. But this doesn’t answers questions like; “which code is touched by this test”. VS2010 answers this question with Test Impact, see “Determining Which Builds Have Bug Fixes, New Features, or Requirements”, “Recommending Tests to Run That are Affected by Code Changes” and “Developing Tests from a Model”.
Another interesting traceability scenario can be build with test case generation, see this ‘old’ Model Based Testing beta 1 video. [some more info on MBT can be read on Rob’s blog]
Next, 
all have a work related task. So, not only traceability within the two sections is possible also traceability between the two sections is possible. answering questions like; “which task created this line of code?”… creating this link / trace is a manual task but it can be controlled by a check-in policy.
So, when someone asks you the question; “what about traceability in VS2010?” you now can canalize this and guide him/ her to the real traceability question they want to have answered [and tell the solution]….
< probably more to come on this interesting topic, also because the extensibility model of the diagrams is powerful enough to create your own required traceability between artifacts with notifications and work item linking… very very interesting >
Microsoft Test and Lab Manager and security and permission settings
Within TFS you can set permissions, what people are aloud to do within projects and with 2010 in place also within project collections and within Microsoft Test and Lab Manager.
In some situations, project settings, you want to set these permissions. For example in the TMap process template there are different rolls responsible for different tasks. The Test Manager is responsible for the Master test plan, the Test infrastructure coordinator for the test infrastructure and tools, the test coordinator for the test plans, the runs and reports and the tester for creating and execution of the tests cases.
These rolls/ groups you also can find in the TMap Process Template.
All rolls have there specific restrictions. For example a Test Infrastructure Coordinator is aloud to setup lab environments but a Tester isn’t, and a test coordinator can create a test plan but a tester isn’t. A test manager and coordinator can edit test runs results. A tester can execute test cases but a developer can’t, a developer can change sources but a tester can’t… etc, etc… A frequent ask question by test organizations is: how can a set this restrictions…. the answer is it is easy but you need to have project edit permissions :-)
On several places you can set security permissions.
In the Team Foundation Admin Console, the same settings can be set within Visual Studio menu Team—> Team Project Collections Setting
You only can set project collection and TFS specific setting at this level, not that interesting for test management.
Within Visual Studio, right mouse click on within Team Explorer or by using the Team menu.
This is a more interesting place to set permissions for the test organization. For example in this setting a test coordinator is aloud to create test runs, but can’t change configurations and environments.
This results in the fact that he must contact the test infrastructure coordinator to maintain the test infrastructure. And he got a message when he tries to change a setting in Lab Center.
A hidden security setting [I call it hidden because its hard to find in my opinion and I had to search for the projectplan permissions] is a the Area and Iteration menu item, just below the ‘Group Membership’ item.
When clicking the ‘Areas and Iteration’ menu item and click on the bottom right of the dialog what appears you can set permissions for the selected Area node or Iteration node. For the test organization important manage test plan permissions can be set.
When you set this permission so a tester isn’t aloud to manage test plans he gets nice an clean messages when he tries to save one.
But, it gets even more interesting. When a tester isn’t aloud to manage test plans he also can’t add test cases to a test plan. So, the create new test case in the plan tab of MTLM also will result in a ‘Not Aloud Message’. While the tester is aloud to create test cases he isn’t aloud to add them to a test plan, within MTLM he has to create test cases in the ‘organize’ tab –> test case manager. So a test coordinator, or some one else who has the manage test plan permission can add it to the test plan.
I have spoken with test organizations who prefer this way of restrictions also have spoken with who don’t want this. Within the TMap Process Template, you will find a light weight implementation of these permissions settings. [not yet in the download ]
To mention all the permission settings locations, right click on the source control treeview and select properties, you can set permissions for source control in that dialog [ you also have to maintain the reporting server and the SharePoint server separately]. ping me if I forgot a security settings location…
VSTS 2010 TMap process templates infographic
Been playing a bit with the creation of infograpics, this is one I created about VSTS 2010 and TMap, what are the benifits of using them together and how are they connected.
This one isn’t finisched / approved yet (so not donwloadable in full format:-), need to change the screenshots and text in several places. But, the idea is to have them printed on a placemat with on the back contact information and to make notes.
VSTS 2010 Test Edition at the TMap® Dag 2009 [Dutch]
Theorie en praktijk wisselen elkaar af met onderwerpen als TMap NEXT®, ketentesten, security testen, Agile testen en nog veel meer actuele onderwerpen.
Tijdens de TMap® Dag 2009 wordt het nieuwe boek TPI® NEXT gelanceerd! Een compleet herziene versie van het TPI® model waarin voor het eerst de business doelen écht een ssentiële rol spelen.
WS8 -- De TMap NEXT® Proces template voor Visual Studio Team System
Gerard van der Pol, Microsoft
Visual Studio Team System ondersteunt uw procesbenadering voor software ontwikkeling door het gebruik van Proces Templates. De guidance en werkwijze kunnen hierdoor transparant worden ondersteund door de in het project gebruikte tooling. Voor de nieuwe 2010 release
van Visual Studio Team System is er een proces template in de maak rondom TMap NEXT®.
Deze sessie introduceert de TMap NEXT® proces template en laat zien welke voordelen er te verwachten zijn door deze te hanteren. Tevens zullen we laten zien op welke wijze de template aansluit op de bestaande en nieuwe test functionaliteit in Team System.
Programma [pdf]
Datum: 17 november 2009
Locatie: Hotel van der Valk, Vianen
Aanmelden: www.sogeti.nl
02: Management, preserving and organization of manual test cases within VSTS 2010.
- Part 00: Agile Testing with VSTS 2010 and TMap
- Part 01: User Stories
- [current post, removed the Agile Testing blablabla and part pre-fix]
This post belongs to the series of “Agile Testing with VSTS 2010 and TMap” although this topic has a wider scope, in used software delivery methodology you have to think about test case management.
A small introduction.
First a small introduction to give some direction on the needs of test case management.
The drawing below I made during a discussion with several TMap experts and explains how test cases are created and executed in a simple situation.
From top to bottom and left to right.
 | Teams start brainstorm over user needs, create stories and write these down on cards together with acceptance criteria.
Within VSTS 2010 this can be done in the work item type ‘user story’ [see previous post]. |
 | After prioritizing the stories, teams start the iterations by brainstorm on implementation tasks and test tasks.
Again, within VSTS 2010 this can be done in the work item type ‘user story’ [see previous post]. |
  | Next, the sources and test case are going to be created, developed. Within VSTS 2010 source files in the IDE and than added to version control. Test cases are added as work item to TFS. |
 | The source files are build, unit tested, labeled, packaged and finally deployed on a test environment where the manual test cases are executed against this deployment |
All the artifacts created by tasks are under version control, except test cases.
All the sources and corresponding automated tests like, unit tests, load tests, web tests and codedui tests are under version control. Getting the latest version of the sources also gets the latest version of these tests. But, also when using the more sophisticated capabilities of version control, like branching and merging, the tests also have this characteristics.
Manual test cases different, they are work items and aren’t under version control they have a history. Belong [often] to a user story. So, it gets interesting when making the above scenario more real live with sources and automated tests under version control with branching and merging. See drawing below…
- User stories, sources and test case are created [top left].
- [red line] A branch is made from the first version to start the development of an other version.
- User story 2 [center] is added to this branch [new/ added user needs], also sources are added to this branch and test cases are created.
- Finally version 2 is build and the test case of user story 2 are executed [bottom right].
Dotted red line; while there was a branch created from the sources, no branch was created from the test cases of user story 1 [top left], resulting in a version 2 with only partial tested functionality.
This branching scenario is very simple, there are some more complicated ones as you can read in Microsoft Team Foundation Server Branching. This 2006 MSDN story has also some nice branching and merging strategies.
The need for test case management within VSTS 2010.
This branching, merging and the decoupled characteristic of test cases is one of the reasons why we need test case management. We manually need to organize and manage our test cases in such a way that every iteration, version, service pack, hot fix and release is sufficient tested and to prove that its well tested.
As described in the paper Test Cube principle [pdf]:
A good test set (= collection of test cases) is of priceless value. During the realization of an application it is the basis for the reporting concerning test coverage and progress. In a maintenance situation it is a source of knowledge concerning the application and a source of ready-made test cases for regression tests.
In the next post we will have a look / deep dive in the capabilities of TFS 2010, MTLM [Test and Lab manager] how they fulfil the needs of test case management and in what way the TMap process template helps this process.
One part of the solution and even an agile one: automate the manual test cases as quick as possible and put them under version control. Next post more…
Agile Testing with VSTS 2010 and TMap: Part 01-User stories
Previous post:
- Part 00: Agile Testing with VSTS 2010 and TMap
- … [current post]
User stories breakdown...
This post is about the work breakdown of user stories during the planning phase of an iteration.
[image from the documentation about VSTS 2010 on MSDN, this page]
During the planning phase of the project, also called iteration 0 [first blue piece], user stories are collected / brainstormed / defined /… in VSTS this information is collected in the new work item type ‘user story’ [image below].
During the planning of the iteration developers the team start to breakdown the user stories [which are selected for that iteration] in implementation tasks. Within VSTS this is done in the implementation tab. The new 2010 functionality of hierarchies between work items is used for this.
Another task also executed during this phase is the creation of test cases. Within the TMap methodology this is described in the planning phase. Where you create the test plan for that iteration, based on the risk class [see user story work item] and discussion with the customer the necessary test techniques are allocated for the user story and functional area. See the initial work items for iteration 1 in the image below, added during the unfolding of the TMap process template.
So, not only the implementation tasks needs to be determined also the test tasks needs to be allocated during the planning phase of an iteration. These test tasks are specific to testers like ‘create test cases for area …. based on the test technique <… decide based on risk and customer contact>’
List of different test techniques…
- Data combination test (DCoT)
- Data cycle test (DCyT)
- Decision table test (DTT)
- Elementary comparison test (ECT)
- Error guessing (EG)
- Error testing (ET)
- Process cycle test (PCT)
- Real life test (RLT)
- Semantic test (SEM)
- Syntactic test (SYN)
- Use case test (UCT)
So, just like the implementation tasks also the test tasks are a link type, have hierarchy with, the user story. [this is TMap process template specific]
We end up with a list of tasks for a user story, implementation tasks and test tasks… testers and developers are going to execute these tasks together in parallel, during the iteration we have: implemented sources for the user story and test cases which are ready for execution. This user story is finished when: every implementation task is fulfilled, all test cases are successful executed and … the tester hasn’t got any open tasks, so all test cases are created.
When giving the tester/ the team a place where they can record their testing tasks, testing is really going to be a first class citizen of the lifecycle. beside this benefit the connection between test activities, risk, user story and test cases gives a great opportunity for reports based on test effort, risks and implementation, later on more on this…
With this this lightweight addition to the user story work item we got a closer to several Agile Testing key characteristics, for example:
Customer involvement in writing tests. –> just like the developers, testers breakdown there work discusing it with the customer An iteration is ready when the tests succeed. –> and all tests are created..!