9WP 1172 0904 Quality Center Best Practices

8/8/2019 9WP 1172 0904 Quality Center Best Practices

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APPLICATION DELIVERY

MERCURY QUALITY CENTER SERVICES

BEST PRACTICES

WHITE PAPER


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Executive Overview 3

Why Best Practices?4

Mercury Services for Products, People, and Processes 4

Mercury Services Methodology 5

Implementation Phases 6

Mercury Quality Center Best Practices Overview11

Mercury Quality Center Best Practices Examples 15

Quality Group Personnel Profiles and Skill Levels15

Test Data Planning and Creation 17

Project Customization 18

Conclusion 22

TABLE OF CONTENTS


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Executive Overview

IT applications must run optimally and consistently if they are to meet the needs of the business. A new

IT strategy, business technology optimization (BTO), maximizes the IT service delivery and management

lifecycle by putting into place and leveraging the right resources to drive business value.

Mercury Quality Center is a suite of BTO applications and services that helps IT to automate key

quality activities, including requirement management, test planning, development and execution of

functional and business process tests, and defect management.

Mercury best practices ensure the success of all Mercury Quality Center implementations. These

best practices cover all aspects of Mercury Quality Center deployment and operation, including product

setup and administration, organizational design, process implementation, continual process

improvement, and measurement of return on investment (ROI). Using these best practices and Mercury

services, you can shorten time to value, reduce the total cost of achieving that value, and loweryour risk

during the implementation process.

Central to Mercurys best practices is Mercury Services for Products, People, and Processes, the model

by which Mercury Quality Center is most successfully introduced into an organization. By concentrating

on all three aspects, you begin building an optimized IT organization that leverages state-of-the-art

quality management and automated testing products, a skilled and experienced team, and proven

methods for achieving quick and significant improvement in test management, test execution, results

analysis, and defect reporting and tracking.

Mercury Services for Products, People, and Processes is applied through the Mercury Services

Methodology, a phased approach by which Mercury Quality Center is integrated into your organization.

The Mercury Services Methodology encompasses a clear series of iterative steps that guide you

in applying Mercury best practices toward self-sufficiency in your management and optimization

processes.

This white paper introduces Mercury Quality Center best practices as delivered through Mercury Quality

Process Service and Mercury Functional Testing Automation Service. They help to ensure that Mercury

Quality Center implementation drives continual value for your organization.

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Why Best Practices?

The benefits of even the most advanced quality management system can be lost when it is not

implemented properly, when the organizations personnel lack proper knowledge, or when appropriate

processes are not implemented. But unrealized benefits are only a fraction of the losses that inevitably

result from late application delivery, inferior user experience, and breakdowns in critical business

processes due to ineffective quality management. Other losses range from wasted spending due to

redundancy of work effort to lost revenues from downtime to damage to the company image.

Employing Mercury Quality Center best practices ensures that you achieve the benefits of Mercury

Quality Center through a smooth deployment:

Fastest possible time to value realization

Lower risk of implementation failure

Reduced total cost of ownership

Mercury best practices are real-world knowledge, not theoretical or abstract. They have been

documented by Mercury experts creating novel solutions to standard implementations and challenging

service delivery issues. Throughout every Mercury Quality Center implementation, whether in-house or

in the context of Mercury Managed Services, Mercury applies these best practices to your specific

situation, creating world-class processes for you that drive long-term success.

Mercury Services for Products, People, and Processes

Achieving continuous, long-term improvement in software quality takes more than just state-of-the-art

technology. Simply installing even the best technology will provide little benefit. Your teams must

be able to make best use of the products, and your existing processes must be updated to include

their use.

Mercury uses a three-fold approach called Mercury Services for Products, People, and Processes.

Mercury best practices address each of these three aspects.

Products

Mercury installs the appropriate Mercury Quality Center components, configures them in an optimal

way for your situation, and integrates them into your existing hardware and software infrastructure.

The Mercury team ensures that the entire Mercury Quality Center environment, including foundation,

applications, and dashboard, are properly installed and configured on adequate hardware, andintegrated into your IT environment, with special considerations for network, security, and other systems.

When deployed as a Mercury Managed Service, Mercury Quality Center is run on Mercury hardware

and infrastructure, and staffed by Mercury experts, so that you can focus on your critical IT quality

initiatives.

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People

Mercury starts by training your team in the effective use of the products and processes. Following the

standard classroom training, we mentor your team through the process of quality management and test

automation on critical applications. This is where they apply what they have learned in the classroom

and gain real-world experience. Additionally, the different team members become familiar with the

interfaces between each group and learn how to rely on each other appropriately. Mercury also helps

you design an optimal organizational structure for the operation of Mercury Quality Center.

Processes

Managing the operation of Mercury Quality Center and the quality of delivered applications presents

a variety of challenges that call for specialized experience and expertise. Mercury helps you create

world-class processes by applying its best practices, created over years of successful customer

engagements, to your specific situation. The processes include Quality Management, RequirementsManagement, Test Planning and Execution, Defect Tracking, Test Automation, Result Analysis , Mercury

Quality Center of Excellence processes, Mercury Quality Center Administration, and others. Additionally,

Mercury helps you integrate these quality processes into your other IT processes.

In summary, Mercury Services for Products, People, and Processes addresses the three fundamental

elements Mercury products, your people, and your processes that you need to optimize to ensure

your success in improving the quality of your delivered IT applications.

Mercury Services Methodology

Mercury Services Methodology is a proven approach to successfully deploying Mercury Quality Center

and improving the quality of applications across the entire organization. The methodology is based on

five defining principles:

Concentrate on all aspects required to successfully instill change in your organization: technology

introduction, people enablement, and process change. This three-part focus known as Products,

People, and Processes is the basis for all of Mercurys services.

Ensure that the approach is practical. Start with an achievable objective and build on each success.

In practice, this means that Mercury Quality Center deployments can start small and then build

toward complete implementation across the organization when the organization is fully ready. This

phased approach also allows flexibility, enabling Mercury to help you implement different processes

as required.

Drive to value as quickly as possible. Mercury believes that you should start seeing results from your

investment as soon as possible. In the case of Mercury Quality Center, this frequently means that

Mercury implements a pilot project as part of the implementation, in which one of your most

important applications is tested and optimized with the help of Mercury experts. In this way, you

learn how to effectively use Mercury Quality Center from an operations standpoint while you deliver

improved quality to your organization.

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Follow specific steps based on best practices. There are literally thousands of successful

implementations of Mercury products. Based on these successes, widespread industry expertise,

and internal use of the products, Mercury has created an extensive set of best practices for the

successful deployment and use of Mercury Quality Center. These best practices are put into action

as Mercury consultants follow a detailed roadmap to complete your deployment.

Ensure your self-sufficiency. One of the primary goals of Mercury Services Methodology is to

transfer expertise to you as quickly as possible, so you can get the most value from your investment

in Mercury products. In addition to using a phased approach with side-by-side mentoring, Mercury

consultants apply best practices and create processes that are custom to your organization, so your

team can achieve your desired business objectives using Mercury Quality Center.

Implementation Phases

Implementation of Mercury Quality Center in your organization is directly guided by Mercury Services

Methodology. The process itself is comprised of distinct and iterative phases that take the

implementation from conception to completion in incremental steps. This ensures not only a finely

tuned and customized test management and functional test automation platform and processes based

on your organizations specific needs, but also leads you to achieving hands-on proficiency while under

the guidance of the Mercury services team.

Test management and functional test automation are offered as Mercury Quality Process Service and

Mercury Functional Testing Automation Service, respectively. As part of Mercury Quality Center, they

can be implemented separately or together.

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1.

ASSESS

2.

SCOPE

3.

DESIGN

6.

REALIZE

4.

IMPLEMENT

5.

VALIDATE

Figure 1: Mercury Services Methodology


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Assess

The purpose of the initial phase of both Mercury Quality Process Service and Mercury Functional

Testing Automation Service is to determine the high-level architecture and the implementation

approach. To start deploying Mercury Quality Center in the context of actual test management and

functional test automation, Mercury consultants assess the relevant strategic, functional, and technical

aspects of your organization; meet with the right team of business and technical stakeholders to

identify existing pain points; and assess the current state of your organizations testing environment and

testing processes. Mercury then uses this information to recommend the deployment of Mercury

Quality Center either through Mercury Managed Services or as an in-house implementation. The

Mercury team works with you to formulate a comprehensive solution roadmap specifying high-level

Mercury Quality Center architecture and implementation strategy.

ScopeDrawing on the information gathered in the assess phase, Mercury consultants help you to select one

of your most important applications as the pilot for the implementation process, ensuring you

immediate value. This phase continues with the formulation of high-level business objectives that will

define the success of the initial testing activity. This phase results in a proposal detailing the optimal

Mercury solution and a written Statement of Work.

Design

The next phase begins with a series of discovery meetings to confirm assessment findings and conduct

a more in-depth analysis of your existing organization, infrastructure, and application environment. This

includes system architecture, infrastructure, data flows, users, enterprise network, organizational

structure and interactions, your processes and workflows, existing testing tools, specific applications

and business process steps to be tested, and so forth. This information is combined with the business

requirements to form the requirements specification document. The Mercury team then works to design

your enterprise deployment with an implementation strategy and risk management strategy that:

Define the general framework for the project.

Determine the optimal sizing of the Mercury Quality Center environment and technical specifications

for deployment.

Specify required process modifications.

Define an appropriate organizational structure to support Mercury Quality Center.

Specify knowledge transfer (training and mentoring) plans.

Fulfill quality, resource, and timeline requirements.

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Implement

The approved plans from the preceding phases become reality as Mercury begins implementation,

starting with the sizing and configuration of the hardware and software platform on which Mercury

Quality Center will run. This is followed by the installation of Mercury Application Delivery Dashboard;

Mercury TestDirector

, Mercury QuickTest Professional or Mercury WinRunner

, Mercury Business

Process Testing, and Mercury Application Delivery Foundation in your environment, including validation

of the installation. If you have chosen to use Mercury Managed Services, Mercury Quality Center is pre-

deployed, eliminating the need for the installation step. In cases where an organization is already using

other quality products such as a requirements or defects management tool, Mercury will recommend

the best approach for seamlessly integrating such external applications into Mercury Quality Center.

Once the Mercury Quality Center environment has been installed and configured, and the classroom

training on product operation completed, the Mercury team begins working with you on the processesdefined in the Statement of Work, applying the Mercury best practices to meet your business objectives

defined in previous stages. Mercury Services Methodology uses a learn-by-doing approach, enabling

you to do two things simultaneously: customize the Mercury best practices to your specific situation

and quickly produce value for your organization.

Most customers choose to deploy quality processes, using TestDirector, before automating testing. The

pilot project in this case begins with the specification of well-defined, measurable test requirements for

the project that fulfill the high-level business objectives. The process continues with identifying which

types of tests to perform, based on the requirements defined previously. Using specifications generated

in the design phase, Mercury helps you develop your test plan, configure automated functional tests

and business process scripts, execute the tests, and report and track defects. Overall execution of the

pilot project can include the following steps:

Test requirements definition

Test plan development

Test case design

Test data definition

Test script development

Test environment setup

Test execution

Results analysis


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To efficiently manage the complexity, the testing process is divided into a number of stages, each with

specific objectives and scope:

Business component testing Tests each individual feature or element and verifies that it functions

as expected.

Business process testing Takes all logically connected business components, links them to form an

entire business process, and tests whether critical business processes within the application run

correctly.

Business integration testing Tests whether critical business processes run correctly within the

application or an application and its interface. Two types of business integration tests are:

Business interface integration test

Business process integration test

System integration testing Tests the system as a whole, which may contain several applications.

This end-to-end-application or cross-application test ensures that each feature can coexist with the

others and that new additions don't adversely affect old features or existing processes when tested

as part of the entire system.

Regression testing Tests a system to ensure that it still functions as expected after a material

change occurs to the system, such as the addition or modification of a function, a change in

hardware platform, or a major release of the operating system or other system software.

User acceptance testing Tests whether the system meets user needs and inspires confidence in its

usability. Also known as end-user testing.

During the implementation process, the Mercury team helps you create the appropriate test scripts that

test the various functions in an application. Further, Mercury works with you to define the defect

resolution process, including defect reporting and management.

An integral aspect of quality management involves the go-live decision process. The Mercury team

will demonstrate how to operate the Application Delivery Dashboard to create and customize

reports and graphs that give you a clear picture of the status of all aspects of your testing projects

and the applications under test. This information allows you to weigh the risk in moving an application

into production.

In addition to the testing process, it is critical to ensure that the Mercury Quality Center administrator

properly maintains users and projects, applies software maintenance, and upgrades Mercury Quality

Center as soon as is practical when new releases become available. Mercury shows you how the Site

Administrator component of Mercury Quality Center helps you to manage data relevant to the testing

process, users, and database servers.

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The Mercury team familiarizes you with the Application Delivery Dashboard, the Web-based application

deployment-readiness evaluation tool that is part of the Mercury Quality Center suite. It provides a

complete real-time business view into the status of your Mercury Quality Center projects, enabling you

to make informed decisions regarding project deployment readiness.

Following the completion of the initial pilot project, the Mercury team completes the draft of your

customized best practices and provides them to you for review, ensuring that you will be self-sufficient

when testing additional applications in the future.

Validate

Once implementation is complete, the principal stakeholders and the Mercury team conduct a

retrospective to review the implementation of Mercury Quality Center, including the architecture, the

pilot testing process, the self-sufficiency of your team, and the processes created based on the best

practices. The iterative nature of the implementation phase allows the Mercury team to verify that you

are able to successfully test and manage the quality of your delivered applications. If further clarification

or additional assistance is required in any area, another iteration can be executed to ensure that your

team is fully self-sufficient.

Successful completion of deployment is validated against the validation checklist. After confirming

that best practices were followed and compliance to the implementation framework was maintained,

the technical outcomes of the implementation are documented. The project final report contains

technical results, estimates of achieved value realization, and implementation documentation, and is

accompanied by an executive summary report detailing KPIs and recommendations for future

improvements. The process continues by identifying the next major phase in the evolution of your

testing organization and processes based on Mercury Quality Center.

Realize

The realize phase is performed throughout the implementation. As stated above, each of the five

phases has its specific set of indicators and goals against which to measure progress. It is vital to track

KPIs throughout the deployment to efficiently achieve implementation objectives, track critical

performance variables over time, and exercise effective test management. Tangible value realization

should be demonstrated in the context of each specific phase to reflect increasingly higher levels of

improved test management and defect identification. In addition, value realization may be observed in

areas such as expansion of number of test assets and tested applications, increased effectiveness of

automated scripts, evolution of organizational change, expanded usage of Mercury Quality Centeracross organizations, and so forth. In the context of the implementation as a whole, value realization is

accelerated by applying best practices to maximize the benefits of the deployment and operation of

the center.

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Mercury Quality Center Best Practices Overview

This section lists the quality areas that are optimized using Mercury Quality Center. The Mercury Quality

Center best practices follow the same outline. Topics listed in bold are detailed in the following section.

Mercury Quality Center best practices are divided into the following groups:

People: Describes best practices for organizing your testing team, interacting with other teams, and

training staff to manage your Mercury Quality Center effectively.

Process: Describes guidelines for processes enabled and automated by Mercury Quality Center and

processes required to manage and operate a Mercury Quality Center of Excellence.

Product: Mercury Quality Center Deployment Describes best practices for implementing Mercury

Quality Center, including initial implementation and ongoing support and maintenance.

A brief overview of the subprocesses for each process follows.

People

The Mercury Quality Center Organization

Quality group personnel profiles and skill levels

Building the team

Roles and responsibilities

Mercury Quality Center team education program

Process

Test Strategy Creation

Manual and automated testing approach

Requirements Management

Requirements gathering and definition process

Requirements implementation in Mercury Quality Center

Test Plan Development

Risk assessment based on quality goals

Estimation of work effort

Organizing the test plan

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Test Design and Execution Strategy, by test type

Business function/component test

Business process test

Business integration test

System integration test

Regression test

User acceptance test (UAT)

Functional Testing Automation

Test automation approach

Automated script design and development

Script maintenance and overall test asset management

System, Environment, and Data Management

Test environment management (including test system)

Test data management

- Test data planning

- Creating data

- Maintaining data

- Supplying and scrubbing data

Defect Management

Defect lifecycle

Defect attributes and definitions

Defect analysis

Alignment with Problem Management process

Quality Management and Reporting

Determining key performance indicators

KPI tracking and analysis

Reporting

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Mercury Quality Center of Excellence Processes

Determining quality goals

Assessing the impact of Mercury Quality Center on existing testing and development processes

Planning for change in communication

Making the transition

First implementation iteration

Expanding operation to an entire department

Expansion to several lines of businesses (LOBs)

Elements of a shared services structure

Work request process and SLAs

Project management

Charge-back models

Product

Mercury Quality Center Infrastructure and Setup

Identifying requirements for infrastructure deployment

Planning the architecture

Identifying the hardware sizing considerations

Identifying the security environment

Optimal setup

Set-up sequence and time estimates

Scalability considerations for large deployments

Mercury Quality Center Integrations

Mercury Quality Center Administration

Managing user groups and user group permissions

Customize module access

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Project customization

- Suggested field customizations

- Field customization models

Template project definition, implementation, and maintenance

Project initiation

Project archiving

Mercury Quality Center System Maintenance

Administrator communication process and feedback

Server management

Web and Application server

Database server

File server

Version control

Backup administration/maintenance

Data archiving

Upgrades and patches

Maintaining high availability

Disaster recovery

Localization

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Mercury Quality Center Best Practices Examples

This section contains a limited number of excerpts of the best practices that are utilized in Mercury

Quality Process Service and Mercury Functional Testing Automation Service. This white paper is not

intended to constitute a summary of the complete best practices; therefore, only a few of the best

practices are shown. There is one best practice example for each of product, people, and process

areas. The examples in this section include:

Quality group personnel profiles and skill levels.

Test data planning and creation.

Project customization.

Quality Group Personnel Profiles and Skill Levels

The organizational design detailed below is a flexible model that can be adapted to organizations of

various sizes and resources, and will contribute to the successful deployment and operation of Mercury

Quality Center.

Building the Team

To maximize resource utilization and make efficient use of available skill sets, it is imperative to build a

team of people to support the Mercury Quality Center deployment. Involving the right people from the

start will help expedite the planning and investigation stage, and uncover potential implementation

setbacks early in the process.


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TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESPROJECT MANAGEMENT

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESSUPPORT SERVICES

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESSERVICE DELIVERY

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESPRODUCT ADMIN*

(1 MINIMUM) TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESPROJECT MANAGER*

(1 MINIMUM)

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESINFRASTRUCTURE ADMIN

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESSERVICE COORDINATOR

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESINTERNAL CUSTOMER SUPPORT

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESTEST AUTOMATION ENGINEERS*

(2 MINIMUM)

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESTEST ENVIRONMENT MANAGER

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESDATA ENGINEER

TECHNIQUESTECHNIQUESTEST ARCHITECT

TECHNIQUESCENTER MANAGER*

* Mandatory (minimum size of an initial organization 5 persons)

Figure 2: Recommended structure of the Mercury Quality Center team


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The matrix below contains an example of the details that are appropriate for a subset of the team. This

includes the individuals function, required technical skill sets, prerequisite knowledge, and more

concrete responsibilities of the team members within the context of the overall process. A complete list

must contain specifications for all roles on the team. Full details on each of the positions are available

during a deployment of Mercury Quality Center.

Personnel with the appropriate skill sets are selected based on the size and scope of the operation,

and in alignment with the new quality management processes. Successful implementation of Mercury

Quality Center requires educated users. Although formal user training takes only one day, it is

recommended to provide the team with additional on-the-job mentoring for the period of approximately


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TEAM MEMBER

Center Manager

Mercury Quality Center

Administrator

Test Automation

Engineer

Project Manager

Figure 3: Quality Center Roles and Responsibilities

REQUISITE SKILLS / RESPONSIBILITIES / OWNERSHIP OF KEY COMPONENTS

Skills: Software Quality Assurance (SQA) experience and understanding of Mercury Quality Center

capabilities, implementation and operation processes, and in-depth knowledge of the graphs and

reports module of Mercury Quality Center.

Responsibilities: Lead Mercury Quality Center implementation assessment; promote Mercury

Quality Center within the organization; confirm resource allocation. On operations side define test

strategy, and analyze Mercury Quality Center data for test process management and release

decisions.

Ownership: Mercury Quality Center process ownership; coordination with business, test, and

development organizations.

Skills: Expertise in Mercury Quality Center administration.

Responsibilities: Create and modify new projects, project groups, users, and user privileges. Work

with other teams and vendors on Mercury Quality Center integrations with other products.

Ownership: Manage Mercury Quality Center projects initiation and archiving, customizations,

and users.

Skills: Expertise in functional test automation.

Responsibilities: Assist in conversion of manual test plan to automated. Design automated test

infrastructure and test suite architecture. Develop, validate, and execute automated tests. Analyze

results if required.

Ownership: Development of automated testing environment, automated test suite design and

knowledge transfer to internal customers.

Skills: Experience in project management and SQA.

Responsibilities: Plan and manage projects delivered by the Mercury Quality Center team according

to the requirements of the internal customers.

Ownership: Test project planning and management, SLA reporting, and communication with internal

customers.


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one week. Subsequently establish a communication plan allowing the team access to the Mercury

Quality Center Champion for possible questions.

Information on other Organizational Design sub-topics, such as when best to expand the team, the

interface between the team and other IT and business groups, and how to transfer knowledge to the

individual development teams, is included as part of a full Mercury Quality Center engagement.

Test Data Planning and Creation

Test data management is an important part of the system, environment, and test management process.

It is recommended to form a team to develop a set of data deliverables to be completed at critical

points in the project lifecycle. These deliverables help ensure that test data is planned and delivered

appropriately. In addition, data review sessions should be held with all key stakeholders to review

deliverables and to provide feedback.

The following section details some of the deliverables and processes that should be implemented to

provide high quality support.

Test Data Planning

The first point in the software development lifecycle that involves test data planning activities is during

completion of the design.

As the projects requirements or change requests are finalized for each release of the projects, the Test

Data Management team completes a release level Test Data Plan. This document is to be created after

Release Management has packaged the overall release. The Test Data Plan and its milestones need to

align with Release Managements timelines and milestones for each release.

The Test Data Plan should include input from all stakeholders. This allows the Test Data Management

team to coordinate and facilitate necessary data-related activities to aid in a successful release. Further,

the Test Data Plan should focus on the planning and level of effort required of the Test Data

Management team. Testing and development teams should work with the Test Data Management team

to complete the Test Data Plan. The Test Data Plan includes, but is not limited to, information such as:

Phases of testing to be supported.

Scope of release.

Test Data Management level of effort.

Logistics and milestones by project, test phase, and environment.

Identification of resources and procedures for test data creation.

Requirements for data refresh(es) and/or data restoration(s).

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Once the Test Data Plan document is created, it should be reviewed by the test execution organization

for approval.

Creating Data

The Test Data Management team is responsible for providing test data to the testing organization based

on the requirements approved in the test plan. The Test Data Management team provides the test data

prior to the test execution phase.

The most efficient and effective way to provide and manage the test data is by use of formalized data

processes and tools. To ensure success, the Test Data Management team implements numerous test

data preparation processes such as data re-use, data consolidation, data restoration, and data sharing.

The Test Data Management team, with the supporting DBAs and System Administrators, can facilitate

data creation in a number of different ways, depending on the unique requirements of the data

requested.

One technique is to copy data from production or other environments into the target test environment.

This method should be used when data that meets the requirements is found to exist within other

environments.

A second method employed is to manually enter data even though the actual entry may be done

by any of a number of organizations based on data input documents provided by the Test Data

Management team. This method should be used when data does not already exist in other

environments and manual entry is a feasible option given the volume of data requested.

Other possibilities include using data generation tools such as the Usage Generator, restoringdata stored in the data repository, and modifying existing data in the environment to meet the new

data needs. Although the test scripts should be created by the testing organization, the Test Data

Management team would provide the test data that would serve as input to the scripts.

If any modification of existing scenarios is needed prior to the start of testing, the Test Data

Management team would be responsible for facilitating those changes from a data perspective. Any

data modifications required as part of a test become the responsibility of the execution team.

Additional information on the system, environment, and data management processes is included as

part of a full Mercury Quality Center engagement.

Project Customization

Mercury Quality Center provides extensive flexibility in customizing the product for specific projects. It

is important to plan customization carefully. With a greater number of available user fields, and the

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ability to add memo fields and create input masks, users can customize their Mercury Quality Center

projects to capture any data required by their testing process.

The Mercury Quality Center Administrator should customize projects to meet the specific needs of the

testing team. This includes adding and customizing fields, and creating categories and lists that reflect

the needs of a specific testing project and suit the projects unique quality objectives, standards, and

testing approach. The Administrator can modify the behavior of Mercury Quality Center fields by:

Restricting users to selecting only values from associated lists.

Making entry in certain fields mandatory.

Preserving a history of values entered in a specific field.

Including data unique to your project by creating user fields.

Associating these fields with Mercury Quality Center and user-defined lists.

The Administrator can customize and add additional fields that may be critical to collecting relevant

quality metrics. The data quality increases as the drop-down lists and automatic fill-ins are used.

Identify the information required for evaluating application readiness and progress of the testing,

development, and other relevant IT processes. Proper customization of Mercury Quality Center helps to

manage multi-application testing efforts.

Suggested Field Customizations

The suggested field customization options below relate to the major IT processes supported or

impacted by Mercury Quality Center:

Requirements Management

Various types of requirements can be differentiated by creating custom fields. These fields can

indicate whether a specific requirement relates to sizing, system, performance, business process

priority, business criticality, and so forth. Considerations such as the cost of a requirement change

can also be expressed with a custom field.

Change Management

Change requests on requirements can be tracked and managed with custom fields indicating the

current status of the request (new / pending / cancelled). Another custom field can track the number

of design changes requested after the release process.

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Configuration Management

Use custom fields to monitor the number of configuration errors detected for each module in the test

plan tree.

Application Development

For more complete information regarding costs and resources, it is possible to create custom fields

that estimate the development time for tests and the deviation from expected and actual

development times.

Quality Assurance

To track weighted defect metrics specific to the testing project, create custom fields for easy

reference.

Manage Releases

Custom fields can be created to track the versions before each release or in some cases the version

number in which certain defects or enhancements will be implemented.

Production Management

Tracking response time with custom fields can help to detect performance and availability problems.

Problem Reporting and Management

Monitor problems that arise after tuning or upgrading by creating custom fields that indicate

the number of problems, their causes, and the cost of fixing. The cost field could be visible to

a select set of project planners and managers or QA analysts.

Field Customization Models

Use the defect entity field examples below as a guideline for how to name and define the function of

each option in a customized field.

Defect Type

Provides a drop-down list of values that can be used for defect analysis:

Configuration Select this type when the defect is due to a problem in the configuration of the

application, application server, or database server.

Data Select this type when the defect is data-related, such as incorrect values for particular region.

Process Select this type when there is a problem with the process not matching the system.

System Select this type when the problem can be identified with an application area.

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Impact

Provides a drop-down list of the following values to track impact:

No It has been determined that the defect does not impact any aspect of reporting.

Potential May have an impact and needs to be investigated further.

Yes Has a definite impact, such as change in field size, change of record name, and so forth.

Impact Severity

This field addresses the impact on the testing effort:

Showstopper/Critical The defect results in the failure of the complete software system, a

subsystem, or a software unit within the system. Testing cannot continue until the defect is

resolved.

Major The defect results in the failure of the complete software system, of a sub-system, or of a

software unit within the system. There is no way to make use of the failed component(s); however,

there are acceptable processing alternatives that yield the desired results. Although the on-line

testing processes would be halted, testing in reporting, for example, would be able to continue.

Average The defect does not result in a failure, but causes the system to produce incorrect,

incomplete, or inconsistent results, or the defect impairs system usability. Testing will continue

contingent on completing an analysis of the scripts to determine if there is value in executing

them.

Minor The defect does not cause a failure, does not impair usability, and the desired processing

results are easily obtained by working around the defect.

Low The defect is the result of non-conformance to a standard, is related to the aesthetics of

the system, or is a request for an enhancement. Defects at this level may be deferred or even

ignored.

Resolution Priority

Resolution priority provides insight for the development team as to how soon the defect needs to be

corrected.

Resolve Immediately Further testing and/or operation cannot be performed until the defect hasbeen repaired. The system cannot be used until the repair has been effected.

Normal Queue The defect should be resolved in the normal course of development activities. It

can wait until a new build or version is created.

Low Priority The defect is an irritant that should be repaired but can wait until after more serious

defects have been fixed.

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Defer The defect repair can be put off indefinitely. It can be resolved in a future major system

revision or not resolved at all.

Testing Region

This refers to the geographic area where the tester is located. For example, if testing from the UK,

then when entering the defect, the correct value would be UK.

Test Type

Enter the test classification of the testing being executed, such as System, Functional, or Load.

Service Management

Create custom fields to report on the number and severity of problems related to SLA

non-compliance.

Complete information on all aspects of Mercury Quality Center project customization is provided with

the full implementation of Mercury Quality Center.

Conclusion

Enterprise-wide deployment of any software can be complex. While operation of Mercury Quality

Center technology can be quite straightforward, experience and knowledge are required to efficiently

tie together all of the implementation aspects in a reasonable timeframe. Mercury has leveraged its

extensive customer base and thousands of implementations to consolidate the knowledge and

expertise that will assist you in the implementation of your Mercury Quality Center.

Mercury Quality Center best practices are structured policies and procedures that guide you through

the deployment of Mercury Quality Center and help you to leverage subsequent Mercury Optimization

Centers and BTO processes. These best practices equip you with an incremental and iterative roadmap

for achieving fast results while consistently expanding the role and increasing the value of Mercury

Quality Center within your organization.

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Mercury Interactive is the global leader in business technology optimization (BTO). We are committed to helping customers optimize the business value of IT.

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Documents

9WP 1172 0904 Quality Center Best Practices