Rational Quality Manager

Introduction

IBM® Rational® Quality Manager enables quality assurance teams to track aspects of the quality assurance effort. The central artifact in the tool is a dynamic test plan that contains information pertaining to the quality assurance effort, such as goals, schedules, milestones and exit criteria as well as links to associated test cases, requirements and development work items. Rational Quality Manager includes modules for requirements management, manual test authoring and execution, test lab management, test execution, reporting and defect management. Quality Manager is a web 2.0 application which runs in a browser. Data is stored and managed on the Rational Quality Manager Server.

It is built upon the IBM Rational Jazz technology platform. The Jazz technology platform is a common server foundation shared by several Rational tools which facilitates information sharing between teams and applications. Through the Jazz technology platform, Rational Quality Manager can share requirements information with IBM Rational DOORS® Next Generation, and share work items and defects with Rational Team Concert. The Jazz platform provides a universal Application programming interface for sharing information with other 3rd party applications.

Rational Quality Manager is a collaborative, web-based tool that offers test planning, test construction, and test artifact management functions throughout the software development lifecycle.

Rational Quality Manager is based on the Jazz™ platform and inherits characteristics from that platform. Rational Quality Manager supports user roles that include test manager, test architect, test lead, tester, and lab manager. The application also supports roles outside the test organization.

Rational Quality Manager is a part of the Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution which provides integrations for application lifecycle management, with reduced cost of ownership and administration, improved cross-product visibility and reporting, and lifecycle integrations.

Rational Quality Manager has the following test artifacts: Test Plan, Test Suite, Test Case, Test Script, Test Data, Test Suite execution Record, Test Case Execution Record, Test Suite Results, Test Case Results.

Test planning

A test plan defined in Rational Quality Manager drives activity for distributed teams through all phases of the project lifecycle. The test plan defines the objectives and scope for the test effort and contains criteria to help teams determine the answer to this question: "Are we ready to release?" You can start the plan as an outline and fill in the details as you work. You can also update sections of the plan as you iterate through cycles of your development process.

The structure and contents of your plan depend on the process model that you adopt. Rational Quality Manager supports agile practices with the "QM for SAFe process" template. That template provides preconfigured elements that are commonly used in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) projects.

Test design with test cases

The test case design and construction features can be used to define the overall design for each test case. Each test case includes a rich text editor with background information about the test case. A test case can include links to development items and requirements. A test case can be associated with other test artifacts, such as test plans, test scripts, and test case execution records. In additions, test cases can be combined into test suites.

Test script construction and reuse

Rational Quality Manager provides a full-featured manual test editor. Existing manual test scripts can be imported from Rational Manual Tester. Reuse and automation capabilities can be added to manual tests by using keywords.

With Rational Quality Manager, test scripts can be managed and executed that were created with tools such as IBM Rational Functional Tester, IBM Rational Performance Tester, Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality, and IBM Rational AppScan® Tester Edition.

Test artifacts can be imported external test management solutions, such as Rational ClearQuest Test Manager and Rational TestManager.

Test execution

Rational Quality Manager includes an integrated test execution environment for running tests developed within the product as well as running tests created in other manual, functional, performance, and security testing tools. Options for test execution include running a test case directly, grouping test cases into test suites for parallel or sequential execution, or creating test case and test-suite execution records to map test environment information directly to the test cases and test suites.

Test analysis, reporting, and live views

Rational Quality Manager includes a set of predefined reports to give the status of the project. In addition, live, test execution status can be seen by opening a test plan or by browsing a list of test plans and opening the execution view. The relationship between test artifacts, requirements, and development artifacts can be traced by browsing a list of test artifacts and opening the traceability view.

Team collaboration

Rational Quality Manager makes it easy to share information with other members of the team. In the Jazz-based work item system, team members can assign tasks and defects to each other and view everyone's status. Test plan authors and test case designers can distribute their work for review and track the status of each reviewer. The team can see new and changed requirements. The team can also view the test cases that are needed to satisfy those requirements. Team members can see who is logged on and what they are working on. Team members can be notified automatically of changes, inputs, and iterations that impact their work.

Authors of test plans, test cases, and test scripts can place a lock on their artifacts to prevent others from editing them.

Lab management

With the lab management capabilities that Rational Quality Manager provides, requests can be created for the test environments specified in the test plan. Lab managers can track all lab resources from a centralized resource repository and service requests from the test team.

Web application security

Rational Quality Manager helps IT and security professionals protect against the threat of attacks and data breaches through its integration with Rational AppScan Tester Edition. Security testing for web applications can result in higher-quality, more secure applications.

Governance

Rational Quality Manager helps business processes to comply with industry, corporate, and departmental standards and regulations. Throughout the testing lifecycle, Rational Quality Manager provides tools to obtain an updated measurement of software quality and project metrics. Through a test plan and integration with requirements management and defect tracking tools, Rational Quality Manager helps creating a test strategy and produce records of test results and project history that can be used for auditing purposes.

Public REST APIs

The Rational Quality Manager provides two public REST APIs which accepts REST requests to CRUD (create, read, update and delete) and query test artifacts. For more information, see: