Team System 2009 codename “Rosario” QA Process – Elements Hierarchy

In my last post "Connect your test cases to work items in Team System 2008 Test Module"
I have talked about how to connect between a test to other work items in team system 2008
we have seen that there is no real connection between a test and work items,
the connection is made thru the properties of the test and there is no way of creating any
report using this information (test coverage report for example).

But...
In "Rosario" it's an all different story, the concept was changed and a hierarchy of elements
has been created to support the QA process needs, on this post I like to examine this hierarchy and I will do that "bottom up".

The first element in our "Journey" is the test case.

The test case in the "Rosario" is a work item so it can be easily connected to other work items in the system (Requirements work items for example) and this information can be manipulated in the reports.
The test case has a list of steps (Actions) and expected results for each step.

Next element is the test suite (also known as test set).

The test suite is an element in the system that groups number of test cases together.
The order of the test cases in the test suite will later define the order of their execution when running the test suite.
Test case can be added to more than one test suite.

The last element I will talk about is the test plan.

The test plan is an element in the system that groups number of test suites together (Test plans contains other elements but I like to talk about the concept and not to get into details), when running the test plan each test suite will be executed by its order in the list, each test suite will execute all its test cases by their order in the list and finally each test case will execute all its test steps by their order in the list.

By using this hierarchy the QA team can control the testing process in a more efficient way and to get all the reports needed to control the QA process.