How to create and manage test cases in Jira and BrowserStack Test Management

What is Jira

Jira is one of the most popular or we can rather say #1 agile project management tool developed by Atlassian. Jira was launched in 2002 as an issue tracking and project management tool and since then, 65K+ companies (like Spotify, eBay, Airbnb) globally have adopted Jira for its flexibility to support any type of project. Initially Jira was created to support software teams in bug tracking. 

Now, Jira is known worldwide and has become one of the most widely used project management software solutions in the world providing Agile frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban. Jira helps to dynamically manage scrum management, software development, bug tracking, marketing, content management and many more. Jira gained popularity as it offers customization to support a wide range of testing activities. 

Why you need a dedicated Test Management for Jira?

Here are a few reasons why you need dedicated test management for Jira:

1. With Jira, test cases can be managed in a centralised platform to manage all the testing activities. It allows to create test plan, test cases, test suites, and test cycles which can be accessed easily by all the team members.
2. Test management tools can be smoothly integrated with Jira. Hence a single platform can serve project and test case management capabilities. With this integration, it is possible to link the testcase with the Jira issue directly thereby ensuring traceability and visibility across the SDLC.
3. With all the testing activities in a single space, it helps to improve and strengthen team collaboration. Testers can easily communicate regarding different test artifacts, activities, test execution and test results being in the same space. 
4. Test coverage, test execution details like Pass/Fail/Skipped, and every other detail regarding test execution can be found and accessed from a common space. This provides a hassle-free environment for the testers and other stakeholders to collaborate, identify problems and make informed decisions based on the testing status. 

Advantages of using Jira for Test Case Management

Jira is a popular Test Management tool, here are some of the benefits of using Jira for Test Case Management:

1. Agile Work management: Agile teams can work with Jira using Scrum or Kanban board. A scrum team can easily break down huge and complex projects into small and manageable tasks called Sprints. This way they can focus on small tasks and complete the Sprint faster. A Kanban team can visualise its workflow and set up work in progress limits seamlessly to maximise efficiency.  
2. Adjustable workflow: Jira grants to create and customise the workflow as per team’s requirement. One can define different stages and transitions for different issues types (tasks, sub-tasks, epic, bug, defect, etc) to ensure project’s need is fulfilled and workflow is defined as it should be.
3. Centralised platform for Issue tracking and management: Jira never fails to provide a seamless experience for tracking and managing issues by different teams working on the same project. Team can create, assign an issue, add priority-severity, and update resolution for any issue type. It also allows us to set due dates, move to backlog, log hours and track the progress of the issues/ tasks.
4. Alignment to organisation’s goal: Ultimately, every individual team and organisation wants to achieve the company’s bigger goal. A team can plan better together when they have the visibility and factors to make the correct decisions while staying aligned with the company’s larger goal. Jira provides a platform to view the overall status of the project, thereby helping the team members by prioritising and completing the task in a stipulated time period.
5. Teamwork and communication: Jira helps to collaborate and communicate between team members. It enables the team members to comment on the specific issue, mention each other, create sub-task if needed and assign to respective members, log efforts, and many more. This way, all the communication and the required information stays in one place and helps to eliminate any communication gap or conflicts.
6. Integration with apps or tools: Variety of tools and apps related to software development and project management can be easily integrated with Jira thereby extending the capability of Jira. This integration helps the team members to benefit from both (Jira and the integrated app) which eradicates the need of switching from one app to another.
7. Inbuilt reports: Jira provides inbuilt reporting and statistics features. It has various ready to use dashboards and reports that offer the latest information. Teams can plan their sprint by referring to the backlog items. This helps the team to get timely insights and ultimately help them to deliver the project on time.

Though Jira is the most widely used tool for project management and bug tracking, it fails to provide test case management. However, this does not mean you cannot use Jira for test case management. There are several third-party tools available that can be integrated with Jira to facilitate test management, such as Zephyr Squad, TestRail, Xray and some others. This integration allows the user to synchronise test cases, track test execution and even generate reports.

Before understanding the integration, let us first get acquainted with the test case life cycle.

What is Test Case lifecycle?

Test case life cycle defines the various stages a test case has to go through to accomplish its purpose. The different stages are as follows: 

1. Creating Test Cases: Test cases are created by referring to the requirements and specifications of the System Under Test (SUT). Initial draft of test cases is created to verify specific functionality, feature or scenario for the SUT.
2. Reviewing Test Cases: Test Cases are reviewed by other testing team members/ QA Lead/ Product Owners or other stakeholders to ensure that all the requirements are addressed in the form of a test case. Test Cases with review comments need to be updated and moved to review state once again.
3. Executing Test Cases: Test cases need to be executed at this stage by following the preconditions, test steps and comparing actual with expected result. 
4. Recording test case execution: Once the execution is completed, a test case is marked as either Passed or Failed. Testing team documents the whole execution process for all the test case execution and also adds any additional observation, logs, screenshots to support the reporting document.
5. Reporting bugs: During execution if any test case fails, a bug is logged with all the relevant details such as steps to reproduce, priority, severity, screenshot, logs, and other necessary details. A bug report should be a comprehensive recording of all the relevant data as it will be referred by the developers to fix it.
6. Updating test cases: As the system under test (SUT) progresses, some test cases may require some changes or deletion. It may also arise the need to write more test cases to cater new features. Therefore, test cases should be updated timely to be effective and comprehensive.

How to create and manage test cases in Jira and BrowserStack Test Management

BrowserStack is popularly known for its cloud-based platform leveraging testing of mobile/web services by providing 3K+ devices, browser and operating-systems. However recently they have come up with a new product called Test Management, which is worth trying! It can be easily integrated with Jira which helps to create, manage, and track the test cases and test runs from within Jira. 

With BrowserStack’s Test Management you can quickly import data (test cases) from the following two tools:

• Test Rail
• Zephyr Scale 

You can also import from CSV files if you wish to. 

On the contrary, you can also create test cases on BrowserStack’s Test Management and link them in Jira. Below steps will help you perform this integration.

Try BrowserStack Test Management for Free

1. Have an Atlassian user account for Jira and create a project.
2. Integrate Test Management with Jira.
3. Add BrowserStack Test Management App in Jira from Atlassian marketplace- Open Jira, click on Settings icon >> Apps. Search for the BrowserStack App and click on the Get App button to install it. 
4. After the app is installed, go to the created project.
5. Click on Settings icon >> Apps >> click on BrowserStack from Apps section.
6. Next you need to authorise the BrowserStack app to access Jira. Click on the Allow Access button. 
7. This will redirect to another tab, click on the Accept button.
8. Add the BrowserStack API key from the API key page and save the configuration. 
9. In Jira, create a task under the created project and add all the required details for the task. Observe that now the BrowserStack button should be available. 
10. As this would be a fresh task and nothing is associated with BrowserStack yet, you would see 2 messages as below. 
11. Navigate to BrowserStack’s Test Management and create a project for the test suite by clicking on the Create Project button. Created project should be displayed with Project Id, Title, Test cases count and Test Runs count. (Initially, it will be 0) 
12. Enter some test cases with all the required details and mark relevant priorities to the test cases.
13. Click on the Test case title and click on Link to Jira. 
14. Add the Jira Id created and click on the Link Issue button.   
15. Now, refresh the Jira ticket to see all the testcases you had linked with Jira on BrowserStack Test management platform. 
16. Additionally, you can also execute test cases on BrowserStack Test Management and see the linked test run results on Jira platform by simply refreshing the page.  

Test Run on BrowserStack’s Test Management 

Test Run linked in Jira ticket

BrowserStack Test Management tools helps you create and manage Test Cases smoothly. You can also connect it with Jira and get comprehensive reports on detailed dashboard.

Try BrowserStack Test Management for Free