Using the Intranet to Implement Shared Steps

One of the really useful features in Microsoft Test Manager is shared steps.  It allows you to specify steps which are shared across multiple test cases, give a name to those steps, and reference them in your test cases. 

Wherever the shared step is referenced, all of the associated steps follow.  This can be used for manual test cases, automated test cases, or a mix, where the shared steps are recorded and referenced in a manual test case.  Microsoft’s example is recording the logging in to your application, and then including that automated snippet in your test cases.

We have not yet embraced Microsoft Test Manager (I’ll give you some reasons in an upcoming post), although we are now on Visual Studio 2010.  As far as sharing steps, we are doing something very simple, but for us, very beneficial.

We have created wiki posts on our intranet site which describe the steps needed to perform our most common tasks.  These include logging in to the application, creating a new case, creating a new patient, performing filtering and organization activities on our cases, etc.  Each wiki post describes these steps in enough detail so it is clear how to perform the actions and what result is expected.

Then, in our manual test cases, we include a one-liner and link it to the associated wiki page.  The test case may have a step which states “Filter Pile on last name starting with ‘D’”.  That is linked to the page which describes in detail how to do that.  When you are executing the test and you come to that shared step, if you know how to perform it, do it.  If you need more information, simply click on the link and the wiki page will give you the details you need.  The benefits:

•  Common activities are centrally located and thus easier to maintain
• Test cases are shorter as detailed is abstracted out
• Testers needing a knowledge refresh can get the detail they need without any searching

We could record these steps although we are not doing that now.  This is a simple technique which we are leveraging to improve the readability, supportability, and usability of our test cases.