Best Practices – HP Quality Center – A Test Management Tool

HP Quality Center 9.0

Best Practices

Shared By
Sachin Kumar
CSTE

Note: The view in this document is based on my real time experience and you may or may not agree with
the viewpoints. The practices may or may not work in your situation

Page 1 of 5
Best Practices – HP Quality Center – A Test Management Tool

Table of Content

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 3
2. Requirements ........................................................................................................................ 3
3. Test Plan ................................................................................................................................ 3
4. Test Lab ................................................................................................................................. 4
5. Additional Information.......................................................................................................... 5
6. Your Opinion ......................................................................................................................... 5

Page 2 of 5
Best Practices – HP Quality Center – A Test Management Tool

1. Introduction

Quality Center is a test management tool which provides very good features for managing both
your manual and automated test cases. This paper highlights the best practices for managing
your test cases.

When you open Quality center, depending on your rights it display the below mentioned option in
the sidebar:

1. Requirements
2. Test Plan
3. Test Lab
4. Defects
5. Dashboard

2. Requirements

When you have assigned with the responsibility of developing your test cases in the quality center
then you must be wondering where to start with. I am going to share my experience to overcome
such a situation.

You need to find the solution of some question before you start writing your test cases.

1. Is your requirement developed and available?

2. Is your requirement organized in a logical sequence?

If answer to both of the above question is Yes, then you can start with Requirement option in the
side bar. In case your requirement is under development, then you keep your requirement
updated in Quality Center alongwith your test cases.

Develop a folder structure based on the logical sequence of the requirement. For e.g. if your
requirement document consists broadly below mentioned section, then create the same folder
structure in your Quality Center Requirement module.

1. Use Cases
2. User Interface
3. Business Rules
4. Report Specification

The above are your folder name under a root directory which can be the name of your project or
product.

You then start creating the requirement under these folders structure and provide logical and
relevant name to each of your requirement. For e.g. if my requirement has say use cases for say
Login, Landing Page etc. Then the Use Cases and other folder must contain these requirements.
An illustration is given below:
1. Use Cases
Login
Landing Page
2. User Interface
Login
Landing Page

and so on…

3. Test Plan

Page 3 of 5
Best Practices – HP Quality Center – A Test Management Tool

Once you are through with your requirement, then you start writing test cases. The best way to
write test cases is to refer the use cases, user interface, business rules and report specification.
These sections help one to develop various scenarios for use cases.

Always think of all possible scenarios and then start documenting those scenarios as per your
requirement.

So now you focus your attention on Test Plan module of QC. Here you are going to create the
folder structure in logical sequence. The best way to define a logical sequence is to understand
the use cases. Your use cases are going to assist in developing the logical sequence and your
test scenarios. For e.g. referring my previous example of Login I can think of various test
scenarios like

1. Valid Login
2. Invalid Login
3. Authentication and Authorization
4. Server down while login
5. Improper shut down in last successful login

In a similar way you can think of valid scenarios depending on your requirement. These Test
Scenarios are going to be your test cases in Quality Center.

An illustration of your folder structure in Test Plan module is given below:

1. Your Project or Product Name

Login
Valid Login
Invalid Login
Authentication and Authorization
Server down while login
Improper shut down in last successful login

Now you must be wondering where we are going to provide the test steps for each scenarios or
test cases.

You are going to create your test step for each test scenario. Before that you have to provide the
details about the Scenarios in terms of objective, pre-requisite, pre-condition, assumptions and
anything important and relevant.

The test scenarios should be completed when you have provided below mentioned detail in
Quality Center- Test Plan module.

1. Details
2. Design Steps

Apart from above you can also provide other details like attachments. You can also map your test
scenarios with previously developed requirement and defects (once you executed the test
scenarios). This you can do using the Req Coverage tab & Linked Defects) available in QC after
creating the test scenarios.

4. Test Lab

Page 4 of 5
Best Practices – HP Quality Center – A Test Management Tool

After completing the test scenarios, the next step is the execution of your test scenarios. The
execution sequence can be built in Test Lab module of the Quality Center.

In the test lab module you add your test scenarios that is planned to be executed. Here you are
creating a Test Set. A Test Set normally covers a full use case. It is not necessary that you are
going to execute all the test scenarios in one go. As I mentioned it is going to depend on your
project plan and development lifecycle followed. If you are following Iterative cycle, then only test
scenarios relevant to that Iteration is going to be added by you in the Test Lab module.
For example, I have 3 iteration for my project and only Login use case is going to deliver in
Iteration 1, then I am going to execute only Login Test Scenarios in Iteration 1. It may be possible
that not all the test scenarios of Login is fully functional, then you have to take only those Test
Scenarios from Login which have been developed and needs to be tested. An illustration of the
same is given below:

Suppose Test Scenarios Server down while login, Improper shut down in last successful login are
not yet developed, then one is only going to add below mentioned test scenarios in the Test Lab

1. Your Project or Product Name

Login – (Test Set)
Valid Login
Invalid Login
Authentication and Authorization
I have not added the 2 scenarios in my Login test set as these are not yet developed. The
decision for adding the Test Scenarios in the Test Set can be taken mutually with your Project
Manager or Test Manager.

5. Additional Information

Last but not the least, Defect module consists all your defects either entered manually or created
automatically based on failed test cases or scenarios.

Dashboard shows your Test Progress and help in managing your risk.

At any point of time you can find whether all your requirement have been covered, tested or not
just by looking the Requirement module. This module shows the status of each use cases in
terms of Covered, Not Covered, Passed or Failed.

6. Your Opinion
Any additional input to this paper is most welcome. Please feel free to write me at
[email protected] in case of any query

Page 5 of 5