Introduction to Functional Test Management with Azure DevOps

Payoda Technology Inc
5 min readJul 4, 2022

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Azure DevOps provides services that allow teams to be more efficient, collaborate on code development, deploy, test, and release software applications. Azure Test Management has a host of features such as: managing functional test scripts, sharing test steps and parameters between different test cases, defining configurations, defining test plans for different iterations, bulk import & export of test cases, test case execution, and reporting.

Understanding Azure Test Plans

It’s no secret that creating the documentation for your Azure DevOps Test Plans can take a lot of time and effort.

The same is true for the requirements that are part of your Azure DevOps project, but Azure Test Plans offer customization. You may make documents according to your needs, since Modern Requirements4DevOps adds the “Smart Doc” module to the list of Requirements Management tools you can utilize inside your project. If you’re a business analyst, this will save you time and effort.

Connecting your Testing Work Items to your documents can be advantageous regardless of whether you’re a business analyst creating a Test Strategy for your team to explain your testing strategy, or a Test Lead recording the Test Plans that will run and what they will cover.

The following article briefly explains the Azure DevOps Test Plans module’s operation and how you may quickly document your test results. You will learn more about the architecture of Azure DevOps Functional Test Scripts and Reusable Shared Test Strep.

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Functional Test Scripts

Functional Test Scripts can be created and managed by clicking ‘Test Case’ from ‘New Work Item’ under Azure Boards. Each work item form provides a standard set of system fields, controls, tracking, comments, history, attachments, and links.

Reusable Shared Test Step

The shared Test Step feature can create a sequence of steps. Several different test cases can then reference this shared step. Select Test Case and click on Create Shared Steps option and create a shared step name. Using the Insert Shared Steps option, you can insert the Shared Test Steps in another test case.

Shared Parameters

Shared Parameters help users execute the same test case with different data sets. Shared Parameters can be added to test cases, and can be converted into shared parameters. The parameter can be created by adding a name preceded by “@” in the Test Steps in Action and Expected result fields.

Define Configuration

Configuration management allows users to execute test cases with various configurations, such as operating systems, web browsers, and other variations. Users can set up the configuration in the Test plans — Configuration Tab. Users can set up a new test configuration and configuration variables and use those configurations in the Test suite.

With the help of predefined configurations, the test cases can be pulled into a test plan/suite, and the same test cases can be executed with different configurations.

Test Plan

The Test Plan allows the user to create and execute a test suite, including test cases, and generate reports. Users can import test suites from one test plan to another within the same or different project.

The Define tab allows collating, adding, and managing test cases in a test suite. The Execute tab allows users to Assign test cases and execute them based on different parameters and configurations. The Chart tab helps track test execution and statuses via charts, which can also be copied to dashboards.

Three different types of Test Suites can be created using Azure Test Plan.

Static Suite: A Static Suite helps organize your tests within a folder. It is a default suite selected in the Static Test plan, and it helps group any test cases into a suite. The main disadvantage of a static suite is that test cases are not directly linked with the requirements.

Requirement-Based Suite: A Requirement-Based suite allows for direct linkage between the requirements/user stories and the test cases for seamless traceability. Test cases added or linked to the requirement are automatically added to the suite. This helps business analysts and QAs to understand the test coverage and execution progress of the requirements.

Query-Based Suite: Query-Based Suite allows users to organize test cases that meet query criteria dynamically. Test case name, tags, release version, or any other filter can be used to achieve your results.

Bulk Import and Export of Test Cases

Users can perform a bulk import or export of test cases from/to a test suite. Test cases exported are defined in a comma-separated values (CSV) file. It would be best to choose the Test Suite option where test cases need to be imported. The Import Test Cases from the CSV option in the Define tab can be helpful.

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Reporting

Test Plan — Progress Report helps you monitor the status of the test plan. Use the Filter bar to select one or more test plans from the project. Pie, Bar, Column, Stacked Bar, and Pivot table are the different report types available. Dashboard — Test widgets help track the overall progress of the test management, including test case review status, test execution, and traceability.

How Payoda Can Help With Azure DevOps Environment?

The availability of your application is required to run tests after each commit. To achieve 100% pipeline availability, Payoda can assist with virtualizing APIs, UIs, and TCP services.

As you develop larger regression suites and tests, you can significantly minimize the time spent testing. With CrossBrowserTesting, our experts will assist you in running your tests concurrently in the cloud for unequaled scale and the greatest possible decrease in build and test times.

Authored by: Britto E
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Payoda Technology Inc

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