Ron Wilson
One of the most important things in software testing is qa testing metrics. It is critical that you have the capability to provide the latest information in terms of where you stand with testing, especially as you are getting into the last few weeks of testing. Having information that is current can make or break your organization. Our testing organization uses HP ALM. Unfortunately, the reporting that comes with the tool is terrible. I don’t understand how even basic test metrics are not a part of a standardized report. Nevertheless, we had to improvise, because failure is never an option within a test organization. We built a web based application that would pull all our metrics from ALM and publish them out for the entire organization. The table structures are a little tricky, but once you get that figured out it is relatively easy to build a software testing dashboard that will meet your organizational needs.
Also, it is important to keep up with industry trends in terms of software testing dashboards. For the most part the metrics will stay relatively consistent, but from time to time someone will come up with a new metric that will help you find out more relevant information about your testing activities. You certainly need every advantage you can gain, and metrics is no different.
Our organization was pulling metrics across the different testing organizations in various different ways. When the company decided to reorganize, we found that there were so many different tools that were built to pull metrics. We are currently working towards a single set of metrics using a single tool. This will help us to be more consistent moving forward and get everyone on the same page in terms of metrics. In addition, when a PM sees the metrics from one project and then another, they will see the standard set of metrics across the company. This will lead to greater consistency. I personally can’t wait until we can report out of a single software testing dashboard!
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Ron Wilson