Microsoft Test Manager – Test Plan – Part 1

As part of Visual Studio 2010 release we get a new tool for Testers called – Microsoft Test Manager (aka: MTM)

Lots of my customer already use this tool and I want the rest will go on the same path, so I’ll write a guide for new users who want to start performing Manual Testing using MTM.

Let’s Start – First thing is to define a Plan, like every other Team, also the Tester needs to start Testing as part of a Plan, Same as Development Team.

So the first part is to create a Test Plan, for some teams it’s depends on the Team Methodology – You can create the Plan with the Iteration \ Sprint \ Version number or for some you can create a Plan called Main or the name of the product.

After Creating the Test Plan you will see the Main window, for our guide I’ve split it to three Part.

1. Menu , 2. Contents, 3. Configurations

Section 1: Menu

Using MTM menu you can navigate between sections depends on what you want to do right now.

Do you want to Plan your Tests? Run Them? Or track the Bugs and Test Results?

Section 2: Contents

This is the base for creating Test Plan, here you will define which Test Cases under different configuration will be run under this Test Plan, you will have several options for placing the Test Cases under various types of Suites.

Suite is basically like a Folder, You have Static Suite (Folder), Requirement Suite (To Increase Coverage) and Query based-Suite to create dynamic Folder that can contain different Test Cases each time (depends on the Query)

Copy Suite From Another Test Plan – Select the Test Plan you wish to Copy Suite and select the desire Test Suite\s to copy.

Query Based-Suite (Dynamic Suite) – Define the desire Query to select specific Test Cases into your Suite.

Section 3: Configurations

To modify Test Suite of Any kind you just need to select it and perform the desire action, for now we can create new Test Case by clicking on the “New” button or adding existing Test Case by Clicking the “Add” button.

In the next post on MTM I’ll talk about Configurations , Assign and Order features that will help you to plan coverage matrix and assignments.

On the right upper corner you can define the State of the Suite, In Planning, In Progress or Completed.

This will assist you in TFS Reports, so define the right State of the plan to create reliable reports.

Enjoy.