Microsoft Test Manager Communication with Developers

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votes

I'm currently designing and setting up everything for our development team, regarding to our new workflow with scrum, test management , ....

Scrum wise is everything done, I'm currently setting up the testing workflow and enviroment.

We would like to establisht he Microsoft Test Manager.

Everything is clear to 1 very important thing - How do requirements of a Test Plan for a single Sprint communicate with the tester, to be ready to be tested.

Workflow and Missing Part explained:

  1. Developer get BacklogItem, describe Tasks, RWT, ... and define possible TestCases, but are not responsible for the complete TestCase szenario.
  2. Tester create a TestPlan for the current iteration, and add every BackLogItem to the TestSuite as a requirement.
  3. TestCases already created get displayed
  4. Tester starts to write more TestCases and defines new ones.
  5. Developer commits work for BacklogItem.
  6. ???? Developer and Tester do a mystirous handshake and suddenly the tester knows that the specific BacklogItem is ready to test and all included test cases ????
  7. Tester tests the given TestCases, reports and creates Bug's if needed.

So as you see, how is the communication between the development team and tester team what is ready to be tested.

What I have spotted so far is the BLOCKED state of a test case.As long as a Test Case is in blocked state, the tester knows to not touch this test case.

This could work, but wow this is a huge overhead for the developer, as a developer has once he has committed his code to the tfs, go to the test area in TFS web Portal, and set the state of every test case of the given backlog item to be ready to tested or otherwise said, the state READY.

This isn't really working for us.

The other way would be a huge overhead for the testers, so if they need to track down in the tfs web portal, which backlogitem is in the commited state, and then start testing the test cases for the assoicated BacklogItem which is a requirement of the current test plan.

So as you see hopefully, my problem is how do the testers know, when a requirement is ready to be tested and all it's assoicated test cases???

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visual-studio-2015microsoft-test-managermtm

1 Answers

0
votes

A process that has worked for me and my teams is:

  • Everyone on the team uses TFS as their guidepost as to what to work on
  • daily standups help determine work for the day (dev finished work on x)
  • Requirements are set to Produced state to show that the dev has finished their work. That's a trigger that it's ready to be tested (as well as conversation)
  • Tester can see in TFS what's Produced and ready for testing (have tasks under Requirements for testing perhaps)

I don't believe that the developers should interact with the Test Case work items. Testers and developers should be having conversations several times daily about their work.

Hope that helps!