Why Test Cases Management Tools are so Ugly and Hard to use?
Originally this question was posted here, but I don’t see any valid answer, so I decided to answer here, on Medium.
Test Cases Management Tools are so Ugly and Hard to use because they all have been designed with a wrong understanding of what kind of job is going to be done. If software designers got the job right, they could build a superior test cases management tool already. But they didn’t.
The thing, that we hire products to do things for us. And speaking about Test Management Tools we have to ask: what kind of job do we have to do when we hire Test Cases Management Tool?
If you answer this question correctly, all the correct application design decisions will become just obvious for you.
So, what kind of a job do we hire Test Cases Management Tools to do for us?
Usually, the answers are:
* to Write Test Cases;
* to Organize and Store Test Cases;
* to Execute Test Cases;
* all of above
But this is bullshit, ladies and gentlemens. Bullshit!
These are totally wrong answers, which lead to a crappy design of all Test Cases Management Tools we have, that impotent to do the the job well:
As to me, the only one correct answer is: to Qualify software Product as Fast and as Cheap as possible.
A business would like to escape testing at all, because it raises overhead expenses for the business. But business can’t escape it, because Quality — is what makes business worth and it is not a matter of trade-off.
All what business can — is to make this overhead as small as possible.
Test Cases Management Tool is not about Test Cases at all. It is about a Product, a Release which it helps to be Verified and Qualified as Fast and as Cheap as possible before customers started using it.
Misunderstanding of this simple concept leads to design of really busy user interfaces overloaded with input fields and controls.
Test Management Tools designers seems think, that QA Engineers are happy to click here and there when they create or update Test Cases. Guys, they don’t like it! Actually, they hate it! They hate this ceremony of Test Cases Design that crappy application design offers for them!
But they can’t escape, because they are not qualified enough to program, to create such a complex software system as Test Cases Management Tool for themselves. QA are qualified to validate complex software systems, but not to create them!
And as to:
* Test Cases Design;
* Test Cases Organization;
* Test Cases Execution;
* and all of above
— this is what we call Test Cases Management.
This is a versatile work around the Product Qualification.
And a purpose of Test Cases Management Tool — is to help Quality Assurance Engineers in this important work.
Do we have any Test Cases Management Tool on Earth, that does the job just right?
Yes, we do.
We do it. We develop it. Our Team.
Our Team is QA Team — so, we know what we do.
And the tool is absolutely amazing already:
* JIRA-like Test Cases Editor,
* JIRA-like pseudo-SQL filter search,
* Test Cases Parametrization,
* Keywords and Hashtags,
* Bulk update,
* Versioning,
* …
and all of above — just with Simple and Clear web interface:
We called it Superior Quality Assurance Mate — and we started a SQA Mate Publication blog wave here on Medium to share our thoughts and ideas of what Superior Test Cases Management Tool should be.
Feel free to follow us on Medium to keep fresh, share your ideas with us, and get early access to the Tool on it’s release!
Thank you!
