Question

A list of free test management tools was put together by Jay Philips and can be found here: http://www.jayphilips.com/2009/09/10/15-open-source-test-management-tools/

Question: Have you used any of these? If so, which one(s) are you using today? Why?

Justin

Answer 1

My organization (around 60 testers in 3 geographies) is using TestLink which is centrally available for our distributed team. We've settled on TestLink as it answered all of our key requirement:

• Online repository
• Good tracking capability
• Reasonable reports (nothing fancy but to the point) which allow us to be audit ready.
• Reasonable interoperability with JIRA (We had to write a Jira plugin to link user story stored in Jira with specific TCs in TestLink)
• Free

So far it does the job !

Fred

Answer 2

XStudio is also a good choice in the free category as it manages almost everything: the users, the documents, the testplans, the test reports and even the Scrum projects. It also includes an integrated defect management system. The charts and graphs are clear, the traceability matrix and coverage figures are pretty good. It can interface with proprietary tests (it includes a SDK to develop your own driver) and is provided with a number of ready-to-use drivers.

Answer 3

My favorite is TestMaster mainly because it does charts and the ability to import and export test cases.

Answer 4

I would prefer TestLink - as complete Testcase Management tool including nice heirarchy of structure to create detailed test cases linked with TestPlan, TestSuite and for bug tracking - Mantis is quite good..!! (Prime advantage is both are open source tool)

• Hiten Dhruv

Answer 5

Another tool that just recently was release with its FREE edition is QPack. This tools goes with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM 2.0 c) concept. It is the best match to the expensive Quality Center of HP (Mercury). Check this web site http://www.orcanos.com

It has:

• Good tracking capability
• Excellent reports
• Good editor with Image embeded inside
• For regultation purposes it was designed to support Medical Device companies to allow the product of the STP/STD/STR for the FDA anc CE.
• Customization using GUI and not scripts
• Inegration to automation tools using CLI and Web Services.
• Much more

Check it out.

Answer 6

My personal favorite is Testlink, especially the latetst version which has improved a lot! Its very easy to use and manipulate (php code), so can be changed to your own preferences. I've translated it to Dutch for an organisation (not that that helps you btw, but nice to know its possible).

Would prefer it over Testmaster not only because of the UI (TM lookes a bit simple), but for the functionallity as well!

But onathor tool is: http://www.freetestmanagementtool.com/

Havent checked it out completely, but seems to work nicely!

Answer 7

A whiteboard isn't free, but it is pretty cheap.
James Bach suggested using a whiteboard dashboard to track tests: Low tech Testing Dashboard.

I am also fond of well done spreadsheets at Excel (or a free variation, like google docs or open office).


I know these options aren't fancy or hi-techy as the other options mentioned in the answers.
But the whiteboard/spreadsheet options are so flexible! They don't try to impose on you any determined process or workflow, the test manager/lead can manage/lead by himself. They don't try to impose any limitations, the test manager/lead can limit the team as he wants.
Exceptions are extremely well treated by these tools. Just add a comment in red at the side of the exception and it is well understood now.

I know that this won't be so popular, and people will reply me "that doesn't scale".
At our company we have very expensive and clever tools, that "scale".

And still, I think the whiteboard and the spreadsheet can scale just as well. It is just a matter of having the manager managing the tests, instead of the tool managing the tests. Having the manager reporting progress and issues, instead of the tool doing the report.
Managing is a task for people, done with delicate people skills. Don't give that role to a tool. ;)

:) I'm yet to see any computer program that beats the flexibility, usability and the 'humanity' of a whiteboard and colored pens. :)

Answer 8

I have had good luck with TestMaster.

Here is the information from the TestMaster site. A link to good screenshots are at the bottom of this post.

Testmaster is a testcase logging, reporting and test automation tool, much like the commercial product test director. It was concieved while I was working in a testbed and was asked to perform testing by taking some printed sheets from a folder, marking off which tests I had executed and emailing my progress every day. Needless to say I didn't do that for long and testmaster was born. It is quite difficult to explain all of testmasters functionallity, the main features are below, but you will get a better idea by looking at the screenshots here.

Features Include :

• Fully web based
• Hierarchal management of testsuites (Department, Project, Testsuite)
• Hierarchal management of testsuite administration
• Import of testcases from word documents, CSV files, manual entry or SQL
• Copy of testsuites
• Testcase logging (including state (pass/fail/hold etc., tester notes, trouble ticket ids and change history)
• Full statistics for each testsuite (execution count, state counts, percentage complete)
• Two types of Email reports
• Full run log and change history for each testcase
• Full testcase / testsuite search facility
• Administrative interface
• Written fully in perl
• Customisable web templates
• Test automation interface

Testmaster runs on Linux and utilises apache to serve webpages, postgresql as the database, antiword to convert M$ docs and perl as the development language.

Testmaster is written by Alan Pearson.

Testmaster is FREE software and is covered by the General Public License Version 2.0, a copy of which is to be found in /apps/testmaster/documentation.

http://testmaster.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html

Answer 9

We looked into both TestLink and Testmaster. We chose Testmaster.

Both are good and met our functional needs. Our decision to use Testmaster came down to a UX/UI choice.

Screen shots of TestLink are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33511927@N00/

Screen shots of Testmaster:

http://testmaster.sourceforge.net/

Ironically, with TestLink, several 404 Not Found errors pop up when you click on tabs from the home page.

Answer 10

Hi,

Maybe not free at all, but cheap (if You already have JIRA) is to establish Test Case management in JIRA - look at my blog for tutorial TestAndTry Jira Test Case Management

And the other stuff there :)

Best regards Marcin Zręda

Answer 11

Another +1 for TestLink; I've had good results on my own projects, and got positive reports back from friends who I ssuggested give it a try.

The suggestion about using JIRA is interesting, but (a) it's not open source, and (b) it's not really designed for test management, so unless you really want to keep your tools list to a minimum I think JIRA would be more trouble than it's worth.

Answer 12

I don't have much experience with using free tools, I would like to suggest you to try with test management tool named Zephyr, It provides end-to-end management of the testing lifecycle in the test department including resources, releases and sprints, requirements, test cases, scheduling, test execution, defects, documents, collaboration and all aspects of reporting and metrics in real-time. You can try with free trials.

Answer 13

I had a look at TestLink Beta 3 release, though it is impressive but there are couple of things not very comprehensible. I could not find an easy way to integrate my selenium tests with it. How have your experiences been with - XQual, especially in terms of Test Automation.

~ T

Answer 14

Hi,

I would like to suggest a new tool called TestLodge - Test case management tool, which is a lot simpler than other tools I have seen. This is a commercial tool, but it does have a free price plan, so may be worth a look.

Answer 15

HP Quality Center...

Answer 16

I work in the high performance computing realm, where applications are batch processed number crunchers that run for days. All command line run via a simple ssh connection.

Site customized bourne shell scripts still work as well as anything for this environment.

Answer 17

(Reposted from the original blog post)

I know that you specifically asked for free tools, but I want to mention our new commercial test management tool TestRail anyway, because of the following reasons:

• People often look for open source tools because most commercial 'Enterprise' tools are just too expensive or not easy to try (e.g. you need to call a sales rep to receive a demo or something similar). I agree that this just doesn't make sense for a lot of teams, but there ARE some professional products that are easy to try (and use) and don't cost $100 per user/per month.

• I may get flamed for this, but some of the open source test management tools have some confusing user interfaces, making it hard for non-technical persons on the team to get used to. If you have some non-technical users (your boss?) who also need to access the system, an intuitive (and productive!) UI is critical.