In my previous post, I talked about the first stages of Test Plan (Part 1), in this post, I will talk about Test Plan Properties.
After we created the Test Plan and defined basic Suite Structure, I switch the view from “Contents” to “Properties”.
The first section allows you to change the Test Plan name, Description, Area Path and Iteration.
On the right side, you can define the Owner of this Test Plan (Like Assigned To), the state of the Test Plan – This allows you to plan future Plans without harming the Reports, and define Start and End date so you can track and see Test Plan progress by Dates.
Run Settings
This is one of the most important sections in Test Plan Properties, the settings here will effect each and every Test Cases running under this Test Plan.
Test Settings: (Select How You Want to Run the Manual or Automated Tests and Any Data to Collect)
From the combo box, choose “Local Test Run” or create new one and click Open.
Test settings use diagnostic data adapters, which specify various types of data to collect when you run manual tests, automated tests, or both. Diagnostic data adapters can also specify how to affect the test machine. For example, a diagnostic data adapter might create an action recording, an action log, a video recording, or collect system information. Additionally, diagnostic data adapters can be used to simulate potential bottlenecks on the test machine or reduce the available system memory. For example, you can emulate a slow network to impose a bottleneck on the system.
Take Notice – Data Collectors can get very big (Size) on the TFS Server, especially Video Recording and IntelliTrace, so Microsoft wrote a tool to clean those heavy attachments from TFS - Test Attachment Cleaner for Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 & Test Professional 2010
If you run your tests using Microsoft Test Manager, you can configure a test plan to use a test setting for all its manual tests, and a test setting for all its automated tests if you need it. In addition, you can select an environment that includes the set of roles in your test settings for all the manual tests, and you must select an environment for all the automated tests in your plan. If necessary, you can override these test settings and environments when you run your tests.
Configurations
Defining Your Test Matrix Using Test Configurations
A test configuration is a set of configuration variables that specify the correct setup required for testing an application. You can create test configurations for your test plan using Microsoft Test Manager.
The configuration variables include hardware, operating system, software, and any other characteristics that are important to use when you run the tests. Each test configuration can represent an entry in your test matrix.
You can use one or more configuration variables to create a test configuration. Each configuration variable defines one characteristic of the testing environment. For example, a characteristic might be the operating system that you want to use to run your tests and the value might be "Windows XP." This test configuration can represent an entry in your test matrix that you plan to use to run tests. The following illustration shows you how to create configurations from within a new test plan.
In order to create new Test Configuration, open: “Configurations In this plan":” and click “Manage”, then you can define new Test Configuration from existing variables (4), or you can create new variables (5), Example for variables: MyComponent, Values:1,2,3,4.
