Chapter 10: Using Test Plans with Azure DevOps

In the previous chapter, we covered how you can integrate Azure DevOps with GitHub.

In this chapter, we are going to cover how to use test plans with Azure DevOps. Comprehensive testing should be added to each software development project, because it delivers quality and a great user experience for your applications. We will begin with a brief introduction to Azure Test Plans. Then we will look at how you can manage test plans, suites, and cases in Azure DevOps. We will run and analyze a test as well. After that, we will cover exploratory testing and we will install the Test & Feedback extension.

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Introduction to Azure Test Plans
• Exploratory testing
• Installing and using the Test & Feedback extension
• Planned manual testing
• Test plans, test suites, and test cases
• Managing test plans, test suites, and test cases
• Running and analyzing a manual...

Technical requirements

To follow this chapter, you need to have an active Azure DevOps organization. The organization used in this chapter is the Parts Unlimited organization that we created in Chapter 1, Azure DevOps Overview. You also need to have Visual Studio 2019 installed, which can be downloaded from https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/.

The test plan that is used to run and analyze a manual test plan can be downloaded from https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Learning-Azure-DevOps---B16392/tree/master/Chapter%2010.

Introduction to Azure Test Plans

Manual and exploratory testing can be key testing techniques in delivering quality and a great user experience for your applications. In modern software development processes, quality is the responsibility of all the team members, including developers, managers, business analysts, and product owners.

To drive that quality, Azure DevOps Test Plans offers powerful tools that can be used by everyone in the team. And by embedding your test plans in Azure DevOps, testing can be done throughout the whole development life cycle as well.

Azure DevOps Test Plans offers support for planned manual testing, user acceptance testing, exploratory testing, and stakeholder feedback. This will be covered in more detail in the following sections.

Let's look at each of them in detail in the following sections. In the next section, we are going to cover exploratory testing.

Exploratory testing

With exploratory testing, testers are exploring the application to identify and document potential bugs. It focuses on discovery and relies on the guidance of the individual tester to discover defects that are not easily discovered using other types of tests. This type of testing is often referred to as ad hoc testing.

Most quality testing techniques use a structured approach by creating test cases up front (just like we did in our previous demo). Exploratory testing is the opposite of this and is mostly used in scenarios where someone needs to learn about a product or application. They can review the quality of the product from the user perspective and provide feedback quickly. This will also make sure that you don't miss cases that can lead to critical quality failures. The outcome of these ad hoc tests can later be converted into a test plan as well.

Microsoft has released a Test & Feedback extension for exploratory testing. This extension can...

Planned manual testing

Over the years, manual testing has evolved together with the software development process into a more agile approach. With Azure DevOps, manual testing is integrated into the different agile processes that are supported and can be configured in Azure DevOps.

Important note

The different agile processes that are supported and integrated in Azure DevOps are covered in more detail in Chapter 2, Managing Projects with Azure DevOps Boards.

Software development teams can begin manual testing right from the Kanban board from Azure Boards. From the board, you can monitor the status of the tests directly from the cards. This way, all team members can get an overview of what tests are connected to the work items and stories. From there the team can also see what the status is of the different tests.

In the following image, you can see the tests and statuses that are displayed on the board:

Figure 10.10 – Tests displayed in the work...

Test plans, test suites, and test cases

In Azure DevOps Test Plans, you can create and manage test plans and test suites for sprints or milestones that are defined for your software development project. Test Plans offers three main types of test management artifacts: Test plans, Test suites, and Test cases. These artifacts are all stored in the work repository as special types of work items and can be exported and shared with the different team members or across different teams. This also enables the integration of the test artifacts with all of the DevOps tasks that are defined for the project.

The three artifacts have the following capabilities:

• Test plans: A test plan groups different test suites, configurations, and individual test cases together. In general, every major milestone in a project should have its own test plan.
• Test suites: A test suite can group different test cases into separate testing scenarios within a single test plan. This makes it easier to...

Running and analyzing a manual test plan

In this demonstration, we are going to run and analyze a manual test plan. For this, we are going to use the test plan that is already added to the Parts.Unlimited project in Azure DevOps again and import a test suite. The test suite can be downloaded from the GitHub repository that belongs to this chapter. You can obtain the GitHub URL at the beginning of the chapter from the Technical requirements section:

1. Open the test plan of the Parts.Unlimited project again in Azure DevOps.
2. First, we need to add a new static test suite. For this, select the three dots next to Parts.Unlimited_TestPlan1 > New Suite > Static suite. Name the suite End-to-end tests.
3. Select the newly created suite and in the top menu, select the import button to import test cases:

   Figure 10.23 – Import test cases

4. Import the test plan that is in the folder of Chapter 10 in the source code on GitHub. Select the CSV file and click the Import button...

Summary

In this chapter, we have covered Azure DevOps Test Plans. We looked at the different features and capabilities and managed test plans, test suites, and test cases. Then we imported a test case from a CSV file and tested the Parts Unlimited application. Then, we covered exploratory testing in detail, and we used the Test & Feedback extension to report a bug.

In the next chapter, we are going to focus on real-world CI/CD scenarios with Azure DevOps.

Further reading

Check out the following links for more information about the topics that were covered in this chapter:

• Exploratory and manual testing scenarios and capabilities: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/test/overview?view=azure-devops
• Creating manual test cases: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/test/create-test-cases?view=azure-devops
• Providing feedback using the Test & Feedback extension: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/test/provide-stakeholder-feedback?view=azure-devops
• Exploratory testing with the Test & Feedback extension in Connected mode: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/test/connected-mode-exploratory-testing?view=azure-devops