Tool Mentor: Performing Test Activities Using Rational TestManager
Purpose
This tool mentor describes how to use Rational TestManager to perform the five activities of testing.
This section provides links to additional information related to this tool mentor.
- Identify Test Motivators
- Identify Targets of Test
- Define Assessment and Traceability Needs
- Define Test Environment Configurations
- Define Test Approach
- Structure the Test Implementation
Overview
Rational TestManager is the one place to manage all testing activities-planning, design, implementation, execution, and analysis. TestManager ties together testing with the rest of the development effort, joining your testing assets and tools to provide a single point from which to understand the exact state of your project.
This tool mentor is applicable when running Windows 98/2000/NT 4.0.
Tool Steps
To use Rational TestManager:
1. Plan the tests 
The activity of test planning is primarily answering the question, "What do I have to test?" When you complete your test planning, you end up with a test plan that defines what you are going to test.
In Rational TestManager, a test plan can have many properties. You can add the properties when you first create the test plan, or add or change them later.
Some of the properties are:
- A description of the test plan
- The owner of the test plan
- The iterations and configurations associated with the test plan
- Any external documents associated with the test plan
In Rational TestManager, a test plan can contain a list of test cases. The test cases can be organized based on test case folders.
After you plan your tests, you can design them.
Refer to the topic
titled Planning Tests in Rational TestManager Help.
2. Design the tests
The activity of test designing is primarily answering the question, "How am I going to do a test?" When you complete your test designing, you end up with a test design that helps you understand how you are going to perform the test case, and helps you to start planning how you might implement it.
In Rational TestManager, you can design your test cases by indicating the actual steps that need to occur in that test. You also specify the preconditions, postconditions, and acceptance criteria.
After you design your tests, you can implement them.
Refer to the Designing
Tests topic in Rational TestManager Help.
3. Implement the tests
The activity of implementing your tests is primarily creating reusable test scripts.
In Rational TestManager, you can implement your tests by creating manual scripts. A manual script is a set of testing instructions to be run by a human tester. You can also implement automated tests by using Rational Robot.
You can extend Rational TestManager through APIs so that you can access your own implementation tools from TestManager. Because of this extensibility, you can implement your tests by building scripts in whatever tools are appropriate in your situation and organization. For example, you might implement Visual Test scripts, batch files, or Perl scripts.
Once you have implemented your scripts, you can use Rational TestManager to associate these scripts with the other test artifacts in TestManager. For example, you can associate a script created in another tool with a test case created in TestManager.
After you implement your tests, you can execute them in Rational TestManager.
Refer to the Implementing
Tests topic in Rational TestManager Help.
4. Execute the tests
The activity of executing your tests is primarily running your test scripts to make sure that the system functions correctly.
In Rational TestManager, you can run your tests in several ways:
- Run an individual test script, which runs a single implementation.
- Run one or more test cases, which runs the implementations of the test cases.
- Run a suite, which runs test cases and their implementations across multiple computers and users.
After you execute your tests, you can evaluate the results of the tests.
Refer to the topic
titled Executing Tests in Rational TestManager Help.
5. Evaluate the tests
The activity of evaluating tests is determining the quality of the system-under-test.
In Rational TestManager, you can evaluate tests by examining the results of test execution in the test log, and by running various reports.
The test log indicates whether the script passed or failed, and gives you the ability to drill down to get the information you need in order to evaluate the results. From the test log, you can identify and log change requests.
There are three basic types of reports in Rational TestManager:
- Test Case distribution and trend reports: Help you track the progress of your test case planning, implementation, and execution results.
- Performance Testing reports: Help you to evaluate the relative efficiency with which an application performs keys tasks under given conditions.
- Listing reports: Display lists of the different test assets stored in a Rational project.
Refer to the
Evaluating Tests topic in Rational TestManager Help.
