In 2008 I was attending a session for the Sogeti Test in Gouvieux. France. There I learned about standard testware. Standard testware should help companies to upgrade there outsourcing abilities for their clients. But the question was how this could be accomplished. My answer to this is by ‘tagging’.

According to Wikipedia a tag is “In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item’s creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.” In this blog we use tags as you can see in the right column.

With tags you add metadata to a piece of information. This information can be a test case, test scripts, test charters or whatever you my need to test an application, the testware. A lot of times this testware has already been made by someone else. This can then be reused for the same type of test. Sure you need to customise the test cases, but the most of it is reusable.

The problem with this testware has always been a standard type of notation for it. With a standard type of notation it’s easy to understand and can it be searched better. But standardising the documentation can be a time consuming task. And at the end of a project there is no time! Let alone to change all the test cases into a different standard.

I would not recommend this for a company to be the policy for testware. But you still have this information available. How can I ‘see’ it? By using tags you can make the information (testware) accessible for others. When you add testware to a, let’s say, testware repository in whatever notation you want, you could add tags about the test cases use, client, product, project, test level, type of business, quality attribute, etc. Like when I add test cases from a governmental client I could use the tag ‘government’, a tag for the project, a tag for the test level, maybe ‘FAT’, tags for object parts and/or test design techniques.

How do you implement this? It can be done easy ‘on the fly’ and more procedural. I would advise the last, but the simplest is the one I’ll explain here.

Let’s say you have a couple of test scripts for testing an application. A test script per object part, different scripts per test level and separate regression tests. These scripts can all be created in Excel (see tmap.net for an Excel template for a test script). First you add the test scripts to a directory where it’s agreed to manage the testware, like this.

All the test scripts are added to the directory (I created this on a Dutch version of Windows XP, but you see what I do).

Next step is to ‘tag’ the scripts. By viewing the ‘properties’ of the file you can add this information on the ‘Summary’ tab.

Under ‘Categories’ you can add the different tags with a semicolon (;) between the different tags.

Like above. I entered the tags ‘FAT’, ‘final’, date of creation in ‘May 2009’, test object and the quality attribute (‘functionality’). When this information is entered it’s easy to do a search on the different tags. And it’s even easier when a tag cloud is used to search through the different scripts.

When a tester starts a new project or client he can search through the testware database to find any scripts that can help in understanding the system and create test scripts faster without the reinvention of them…

I recommend that a company saves all its testware in one place (using a testware management process) and adding tags on them to help in future test projects. 

1. Andreas Prins Says:
   February 23rd, 2010 at 12:40

   Ewald,

   Can you please also explain how to search? Are there special options to search in the documents? Do you have experience with this? What is the easy way to do this?

   By the way very useful post!

2. Reinder Says:
   February 23rd, 2010 at 12:44

   Very usefull piece! But like andreas, I’m wondering how I can search for tags? The search functionality of Windows is not very good.

3. Ewald Says:
   February 23rd, 2010 at 13:58

   @Reinder and Andréas,

   Thanks.

   Indeed the search function on Windows itself isn’t very good, but it is possible. Windows 7 has an even better functionality. This is an example. I recommend to use a better search system system.

   -Ewald