Mercury Quality Center Formerly Test Director:

The purpose of this article to cover the following topics:

• Testdirector Introduction
• Understanding the Testdirector Interface.
• Understanding Requirement Analysis Module Of Testdirector.

• Quality Center is an enterprise-wide application that is based on Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)technology.
• TestDirector™ streamlines the quality management process — from requirements gathering through planning, scheduling and running tests, to defect/issue tracking and management — in a single browser-based application.
• Mercury TestDirector for Quality Center supports high levels of communication and collaboration among IT teams. 
• Mercury TestDirector for Quality Center enables your organization to digitize specific quality processes and procedures within the larger application lifecycle.

Quality Center- Usage:

• Business analysts define application requirements and testing objectives
• Test managers and project leads design test plans and develop test cases
• Test automation engineers create automated scripts and store them in the repository
• QA testers run manual and automated tests, report execution results, and enter defects
• Developers review and fix defects logged into the database
• Project managers create application status reports and manage resource allocation
• Product managers decide whether an application is ready to be released.
  

QualityCenter Login:

Type the url of the  QualityCenter in the browser window and following screen will come:

To Login provide the user id, password and Domain name provided to you.

Quality Center - Features:

Web based application with the following features

• Requirement management
• Test plan
• Test lab
• Defects management

First tab of the Quality Center is Requirement management. Below the requirement specification tab's workflow is given:

Define the Testing scope first:

Gather all available documentations of the product under test. Documents include

• Business and Marketing Requirements
• System Requirements Specs
• Design Documents

QA tester creates a hierarchical structure, defining the requirements.
For example,the requirement topic Application Security for a
Airline reservation system may be broken down into the following:

Analyze Requirements:

• QA managers review the requirements.
• The requirement is assigned a reviewed status if it is approved.

Requirement Module – Coverage View

Requirement Toolbar:

How to Create New Requirement ?

• Name the requirement
• Fill the details for the requirement
• Fill the Description using the Description Pane
• Add an attachment to the requirement using the Attachment Button

Author

• Creation Date, time, etc
• Direct Cover Status – States how its linked to the tests. By default it is Not Covered
• Not Covered means it has not been linked to any test

• Attaching a file
• Attaching a snapshot
• Attaching a URL
• Attaching System Information
• Attaching an Image from the clipboard

Mailing Requirements:

Modifying Requirements

• Renaming
• Copying
• Deleting
• Modifying

• To convert all requirements, choose Tools > Convert to Tests > Convert All
• To convert a specific requirement, choose Tools > Convert to Tests > Convert Selected
• Choose an automatic conversion method

Summary:

• Testdirector is a comprehensive tool to document the entire test life cycle.
• The Requirment Analysis module provides a mechanism to document the entire requirement details of the document.
• Testdirector also allows linking of the requirement module to the real tests in the other modules.
• More on the other three modules (Test Plan, Test Lab and Defect Management) in the next Articles.