Although manual testing is an important part of software quality assurance efforts, it's largely been overlooked by tool companies in the past. Finally, IBM® Rational® Manual Tester gives testing staffs a tool to manage creation and maintenance of manual test scripts simply and straightforwardly. The tool balances a full feature set with ease of learning and implementation. This introduction to Manual Tester will give you a preview of its intuitive interface and comprehensive features. We start with a discussion of why manual testing is important and what problems can plague it when it's managed using Excel spreadsheets or Word tables, as it commonly is.
Editor's note: IBM Rational Manual Tester is available both separately and as part of IBM Rational Functional Tester version 6.1 and later. Both versions of the tool offer the same functionality.
Even in this age of short development cycles and automated-test-driven development, manual testing contributes vitally to the software development process. Here are a number of good reasons to do manual testing:
- By giving end users repeatable sets of instructions for using prototype software, manual testing allows them to be involved early in each development cycle and draws invaluable feedback from them that can prevent "surprise" application builds that fail to meet real-world usability requirements.
- Manual test scripts gives testers something to use while awaiting the construction and debugging of automated scripts.
- Manual test scripts can be used to provide feedback to development teams in the form of a set of repeatable steps that lead to bugs or usability problems.
- If done thoroughly, manual test scripts can also form the basis for help or tutorial files for the application under test.
- Finally, in a nod toward test-driven development, manual test scripts can be given to the development staff to provide a clear description of the way the application should flow across use cases.
In summary, manual testing fills a gap in the testing repertoire and adds invaluably to the software development process.
Problems with using Excel or Word to manage manual testing
Because manual test script creation is, well, manual, organizations may not realize all of the benefits of manual test scripting in today's short development cycles. Typically, testing staffs use Excel spreadsheets (or, less typically, Word tables) to record testing steps, expected results, and pass/fail state in the required timeframes. They compile the results of testing either manually or with homegrown programs that import the Excel spreadsheets or Word tables, process the test results, and then produce reports.
But anyone attempting to use Excel spreadsheets or Word tables to manage manual test scripts will run into these problems:
- The need to constantly scroll horizontally and vertically makes these methods inefficient and difficult to use.
- The typically wide formats of Excel spreadsheets or Word tables and the need to reproduce headings on each page make it difficult to print reports.
- It's hard to organize scripts by grouping testing steps.
- There's no standard way to identify expected results within test scripts.
- There's no standard way to report test results.
- It's hard or impossible to reuse test script lines or groups of lines in different test scripts.
A tool that solves these problems would enable test departments to take full advantage of their enlightened decision to incorporate manual test scripts into the application development process.
IBM Rational Manual Tester is the tool that testing staffs have been waiting for to address the problems listed above and make management of manual test scripts simple and straightforward. It doesn't take much hands-on experience with Manual Tester to prompt a tester to ask, "Why use Excel any longer for manual test scripts?" Manual Tester is easy to learn (allow about an hour and a half) due to the detailed tutorials that come with the tool, the tool's smart design, and the intelligence of its user interface.
The best thing about using this tool to manage manual testing is that the test scripts created by multiple testers will all follow the same standards. Here are the capabilities of Manual Tester that lead to standardization in scripts:
- Displays and prints standard icons identifying script lines by type (script step, verification point, reportable point, or group of steps).
- Allows the reuse of script steps or groups of steps among different scripts.
- Allows easy grouping of steps, which makes grouping an easily enforceable organizational standard.
- Associates script lines with standard sets of tester-defined properties, such as Name, Compare Data, and links to attachments (which can opened within Manual Tester).
- Provides an interface that enforces standardized expected results (for example, "inconclusive," "pass," "fail," "error") during execution of scripts.
- Allows for standardized comparisons of data during execution of scripts.
- Allows the test team to select font and color for the text of script steps.
A look at Manual Tester's features
As you can see in Figure 1, Manual Tester's well-formatted script-editing screen minimizes the need for scrolling. Multiple scripts can be opened and accessed via tabs at the top of the window. A toolbar provides icon shortcuts to major functions.
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| Figure 1: The Manual Tester user interface |
| (click here to enlarge) |
The Manual Tester user interface also makes it easy to group and reuse script steps, and to track the results of executing scripts. And Manual Tester's wizards make it easy to import and export test scripts. We'll take a look at each of these features.
Grouping of script steps is accomplished via an Outline panel (think Windows Explorer) that allows intuitive dragging and dropping onto folder icons that represent groups (note the Logon folder in Figure 2).
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| Figure 2: Grouping script steps in the Outline panel |
| (click here to enlarge) |
Reuse of script steps is also accomplished in Manual Tester via drag-and-drop functionality. First the tester drags the script step or group (folder) of steps from the Outline panel to the Reuse panel (see Figure 3 for an example of dragging the Logon folder to the Reuse panel).
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| Figure 3: Dragging a folder designated for reuse to the Reuse panel |
| (click here to enlarge) |
Then the tester drags the script step or group of steps from the Reuse panel to the desired location in the same or in a different script. The reused script steps are automatically referenced (see Figure 4 for an example of the Logon folder being referenced in a different script).
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| Figure 4: Dragging reusable script steps from Reuse to another script |
| (click here to enlarge) |
Although the reused steps are displayed in the new script as though they were a physical part of the script, these script lines are actually only references to a single (true) base instance of the steps. This fact endows Manual Tester with the nifty ability to automatically refresh all referenced script lines whenever the base script lines are modified. Thus, reuse of automatically generated and maintained script steps is a workable reality in Manual Tester that has the potential to save significant amounts of usually scarce test department resources.
Manual Tester executes scripts by displaying a user interface for each step in succession (see Figure 5). The tester selects standard results (for example, "pass," "fail," "error," "inconclusive") from a drop-down list. Custom result types can also be added to the list in order to enforce existing organization standards. Comparison values and any related attachments are displayed on the same screen in the Properties panel. The Properties panel also allows the tester to annotate the execution step with free-form comments. The execution window can be made translucent so that the application under test can be seen behind it.
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| Figure 5: The execution window |
| (click here to enlarge) |
Exporting and importing scripts
The Manual Tester Export Wizard makes it easy to export scripts from Manual Tester (see Figure 6), in case an organization still needs to rely on in-house reporting or other management of test scripts.
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| Figure 6: Exporting Manual Tester scripts to other applications |
| (click here to enlarge) |
The Import Wizard makes it easy to migrate from legacy manual scripting environments, such as Excel or Word, to Manual Tester (see Figure 7). Importing such legacy scripts benefits individuals outside of the test department, such as end users, use case analysts, or project managers who have the need to create manual test scripts for validation or communication purposes. The tester can choose from either Excel or Word and then bring these scripts into Manual Tester format. The tester can select whether to keep imported scripts in their original files or merge them into a single Manual Tester script.
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| Figure 7: Importing a legacy script |
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The next dialog window allows the tester to select which formatter Manual Tester should use when importing the legacy script. (There's currently only one, for Excel -- see Figure 8.)
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| Figure 8: Selecting an import formatter |
| (click here to enlarge) |
As this article has described, Rational Manual Tester nicely balances a full feature set with ease of learning and implementation. The tool accomplishes this by leveraging an intuitive interface that manages to keep all aspects of manual test script creation and maintenance simple and straightforward. Now if it could just generate all of the script steps automatically...
- Learn about the IBM Software Development Platform and why Rational products are an important component of it.
- Share your questions and views on the topics covered in this article with the author and other readers in the Rational discussion forums.
- Browse for books on these and other technical topics.
Randy Masciana, M.S., is a consultant with 25 years of experience in software architecture, development, and testing. For the past several years, the author has led software architecture and quality assurance efforts at the Bureau of Laboratories for the State of Florida. He's also been a presenter at the Rational Users Conference and a contributor to Rational discussion forums. He can be reached by e-mail.
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