HP Quality Center Tutorial (Day 7) – Project Analysis Using the Powerful Dashboard Tools

Here we are at the end of the QC series. If you are here for the first time, I highly recommend you to go through all the Quality center tutorials published as of now. I’m sure after reading these tutorials you should be able to start using this tool on your live projects. You can also recommend it to management team for evaluation if you are thinking to introduce a test management tool on your project.
This last topic will help you use the inbuilt analysis feature of Quality Center in a way that reduces a lot of work on the tester or test manager’s end to explicitly record, collect and understand the data related to the entire QA process.

Quality Center Dashboard:

The analysis feature in HP ALM/QC is so robust and extensive that I believe this is what makes many companies or projects to go for it. Nobody wants to go deeper into their projects without knowing how far you have come and how much longer you need to keep going or if you need to keep going at all. ALM provides excellent insights into this.
There are many graphs that are readily available and if that does not work for you, you can always define what you would like to view.
Apart from the graphs, ALM can generate Excel reports and Project reports for you.
QC Dashboard has the following 2 components:
1) Analysis View
2) Dashboard View
Let’s discuss these components in detail:

1) Analysis View module:

Contains the analysis tree in which you organize all your analysis items.
There are two tabs to this view.

• Analysis View
• Analysis Menu

Tab #1) Analysis View:
You can use the “Graph Wizard” that will guide you to add the graph or you can add a custom graph.
a) Using the “Graph Wizard”:
Choose the following option

Choose the graph type:

Choose Entity:

Choose Project:

Choose filter:

Select graph attributes and click “Finish”

The graph gets generated and you will have an option to add it to the analysis tree.

b) Custom Graph:
Here you can create graphs and reports that are custom to your project. To do so, you can create a folder. Under the folder you have an option to create the following:

Choose the relevant option. I am going to go with “New Graph”. The following dialog opens up:

Under Entity, you have the following option and depending on the entity you choose, the graph type field is populated.

For example, for defects, these are the options:

I am going to leave the default values as is and choose the graph name as “Test” and click ok.
As you can see, “test” graph is added under the folder. I can now configure the values as I wish and view the graph.

Tab #2) Analysis Menu:
This second tab to the analysis view has a lot of inbuilt reports based on each side bar menu item. Choose the report you would like to view. I chose “Tests with Linked Defects”. In the right hand side you can see its details:

Once you click on the “Configuration” tab, you can set the proper parameters for the report or graph you would like. Set the parameters and click on “Generate”.

The view tab will have a link to the previously generated reports:
The report:

2) Dashboard View Module:

This is more like the port folio page of your Demat account.  This is where all the graphs and reports that you have created using the analysis view are displayed for you in a single view.
Click on this icon,  to create a new dashboard page.
Provide a name for the page and click OK.

Once the page is created, you can add what graphs that you would like to be a part of this page. The graphs will be from the analysis view.
You can choose the graphs you would like. I am going to choose just one, “test” for the sake of this tutorial. It gets added to my “Configuration tab” and I can view it from view.

View tab:

Now let’s add both the graphs to our dashboard page and see how it looks.
Configuration tab:

View tab:

So, there you have it, all in one place!

Miscellaneous Topics:

I am now going to introduce to you the other options that are available in the sidebar of ALM. They are not widely used (at least not so far) but I believe they come with a huge potential. So, I encourage you to try and use them in your projects (if applicable) and see if they would help. The topics are:
1) Libraries and Baselines: Libraries are nothing but a set of entities in your projects and the relationships between them. For example: A library can be all the requirements that are specific to UI changes that are being made to your AUT
ALM lets you share libraries among projects so you can identify dependencies.
To create a library – Click on the “Libraries” option from the side bar and on any folder (or create a folder), right click and choose “New Library”. The following window opens up and as you can see, a library can consist of Requirements, Resources, Components and Tests. You can choose them in the below window.

Once you create a library you can create a baseline with it. A baseline is a snap shot of your library at any given time. To create a base line you can right click on any library and select “Create Baseline” option.
So when you compare different baselines you will know what the progress of your library has been like at a certain time.
2) Test Resources:

• If in your project you have a consolidated sheet (MS Excel) of user IDs and password that you use for your testing. Instead of having a local copy on each machine you want to maintain it in ALM. You can do so by uploading it to QC as a Test Resource
• A Test resource can be used by one or more tests.
• You can also define what tests depend on what resources.
• To sum up – You can upload and download resources, link resources and view dependencies through ALM.

Points to note:

1. ALM can be used for Agile, Iterative or Sequential models of projects.
2. Version control is an inbuilt feature.

In Conclusion:

This finishes our QC tutorial and I sincerely wish that you got to get a feel of what this tool is all about and what it can do for you through this series.