The best tools to use in project documentation for software testing

There is no software development without the testers. Software testing teams are an absolute necessity in any software development company.

The IT outsourcing companies can offer the services of such teams to any company interested in working with them.

As a software tester, your goal is to make sure that you deliver ready to use products. To do this, several tools can help you in the process.

Do you need a tool that helps you with the project documentation?

Use Confluence. Why let the information be all over the place? With this tool, you can bring that information in one place. Confluence is an online application that helps any team to discuss and organize all the documentation. So basically, Confluence lets you create a space. For you and your team.

First, you have to create a personal space. Your space is where you store information about you and from your projects. What should contain this page? A homepage, where others can see what you are working on, pages that include drafts, mockups that can later be moved to a project space and pages for your work which track personal goals any information you put in.

For your team, the designated space will contain everything from project plans, timelines, technical documentation and so on. This space should have a homepage that contains all your team’s work, past and recent. Using the Space Shortcuts, you will create links to the most important pages your team needs access to.

How to create a page in Confluence? It’s very easy. You just have to hit the “Create” button from the navigation bar at the top of the screen and select a space for the page. Make sure that you select the right space for your page. Confluence has also preconfigured template pages to make the experience even easier for those new to the tool.

Don’t forget about permissions. These are very important. They allow you to control the access to the spaces you created. The creators of Confluence advise us to give to everyone in the company the ability to see and add content to the page but not delete anything and your team should have the ability to add and delete information.

What about project management and bug tracking?

We might use JIRA. This is a tool developed to help teams with bug and issue tracking and project management. It is a very complex tool, that’s why we will focus on explaining some main features.

First, what does JIRA consist of? In this tool, you can configure Workflows, Issue Types, Custom Fields, Screens, Field Configuration, Notification, and Permissions.

To start working in JIRA, you must import a project. Once you do that, the JIRA tool issue will start tracking bugs or issues existent in the project. This section has several features like Issue Type, Workflow, Screens, Fields and Issue Attributes.

• Issue Type – you can create and track different types of items and classify them in sub-task, bug, new feature, etc.
• Components – these are sub-sections of a project. They add structure to the projects by separating them into teams, modules, features, etc.
• Screen – when you create an issue, it will be categorized into different fields known as screens (Default, Resolve Issue and Workflow)
• Issue Attributes – encompasses Statuses and Resolutions used to indicate the progress of a project and Priorities used to establish the importance of an issue.

Creating an issue in JIRA

First, you must open JIRA Dashboard and log in. Click on “Project” and a window will open with options such as Simple Issue, Tracking, Project Management, Agile Kanban, etc. Clicking on “Simple Issue Tracking” will
make another window open where you can describe all the details about the issue and assign it to someone from the team and then click “Submit”. Once created, a pop-up will appear with the confirmation.

If the issue is complex, you can always create a Sub-Task that has the role of splitting the main issue into several smaller tasks, which can later be assigned to different people.

JIRA workflow lets you establish the status and transitions of an issue. This feature consists of 5 stages: Open issue, Resolved issue, In Progress issue, Re-Opened issue and Close issue.

Reports can be made in JIRA. They track the progress of tasks. The reports that can be issued are Sprint Report, Epic Report, Version Report, Velocity Chart, Control Chart, Cumulative flow diagram, and the Burndown Chart. You can also configure your report.

As I said, JIRA is a very complex tool but very good for tracking bugs and for project management. To discover all it’s potential, we advise you to use it. Your team will be thankful.

Our teams at AROBS use both of these tools. For the accuracy of the content, we included two links, so the reader might find out more about the tools presented:

• https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
• https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira