CS-6302 APPLICATION LIFECYCLE MGT

INTRODUCTION TO APPLICATION LIFECYCLE 12.0 part 2

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Module 002 INTRODUCTION TO APPLICATION

LIFECYCLE 12.0 PART 2

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.”

– John Ruskin

Overview of the Course

Students learn how to manage quality information throughout the

development cycle, from constructing requirements, designing and executing tests,
through monitoring defects.

Students learn how to work with the Desktop client and the new Web client. In
addition, using the HP Sprinter and its new features are discussed, including:

 Using HP Sprinter on manual tests

 Using version control to keep track of changes and also to create and
manage libraries
 Creating and comparing baselines
 Importing and exporting from Microsoft Excel
 Generating reports and graphs using the dashboard
 Using cross-project customization and Project Planning and Tracking
(PPT)

Objectives:
After completing this module, you should be able to:

 Describe HP’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) product

 Describe the ALM hierarchy and roadmap

 Navigate through the ALM modules

 Describe the key features and benefits of ALM

 Identify what’s new in ALM version 12.0

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 Identify additional helpful resources

Researching beyond the coverage of this module is highly encouraged to

supplement your understanding of the topics covered. Always, think and see
beyond the box.
The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation for accuracy
before use.

So, what are we waiting for? Let us now explore the Lifecyle
Management of Application

Introduction

Requirements Management
When creating requirements, you are translating business
goals/objectives into a realized software-enabled business process. You should
understand the business goals and objectives and you should care about the IT
approach and impact. This is a strategic control point in the process; you could
fail in the end if you have not delivered against the requirements, even if you do
everything else perfectly.
When you begin to understand the perspective of each side, you can see
how the requirements help bridge the gap between IT and the business.
Key Benefits
The key benefits include:
 Manage requirements changes and impact
 Multi-dimensional traceability
 Requirements coverage analysis
 Requirements linkages to requirements, tests, defects
 Bi-directional traceability across the application quality lifecycle
Key Capabilities
The key capabilities include:
 Managing complete and verifiable requirements and dependencies
 Tracking multiple requirements types
 Analyzing requirements change impact
 Leveraging existing assets in MS Word
 Integrating with demand systems, both strategic and operational

Business Process Modeling

The ALM Business Models module addresses the need for a stronger
connection between business process modeling, quality assurance
management, and requirements definition. This module integrates business
process models into the application lifecycle.
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This integration fosters collaboration between the various roles involved

in the business process modeling and testing lifecycles, thereby facilitating
communication between business users and those in more technical
departments. This collaboration facilitates better business outcomes by
identifying high-level activities, thus guiding the QA manager in determining the
high-level test requirements.
Integrating business process models into ALM involves importing
business process models into ALM and linking requirements and tests to
models, activities, and end-to-end business flows. After executing tests, you can
display quality status views on the business process model level.
To work with business process models in ALM, you must first design
models with standard modeling tools, and import the models into ALM.
In addition to the standard business process model entities, ALM enables
you to perform quality testing on end-to-end business flows (paths).

Version Control

Versioning allows distributed teams to collaborate on joint development

of tests without the risk of overriding each other’s changes. You no longer have
to worry about making multiple copies of the assets and can be automatically
notified when an asset changes so you can stay in synch with the latest version,
or choose to continue using the version that you have.
Version control is enabled for requirements, tests, and test assets to
allow distributed teams to collaborate and manage multiple versions of assets
in parallel while maintaining data integrity and providing an audit history of
changes throughout the project lifecycle.
An entity can be checked out for update, and then checked back in when
changes are complete. All projects using that asset are automatically notified of
the change and can choose to accept or reject the change as they manage their
version of assets.

Risk-based Quality Management

The highly competitive business environment today is forcing

organizations to do more with less. While resources available to IT
organizations are shrinking, applications are growing in number, size, and
complexity. The business risk associated with this scenario can now be managed
through ALM Risk Analysis.
 Stakeholders can assign business risk to the requirements that help test
managers calculate how much effort to spend on testing each
requirement. This helps you develop a strategic plan and develop a
business contract between QA and business managers
 Tests can now be designed based upon requirements. ALM can manage
both automated and manual tests in the same repository to facilitate the
ease of reusability of these assets.
 Advanced test planning capabilities allow various types of testing,
including functional, regression, load, unit, and integration testing—each
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with its own set of requirements, schedules, and procedure. You can run
tests unattended and emulate real life business processes.

Comprehensive Requirements Traceability

Requirements traceability defines a relationship between two or more

requirements. When analyzing the impact of a change proposed in a specific
requirement, the traceability links indicate the other requirements that the
change might affect.
You can add traceability links to and from a selected requirement:
 Trace from links indicate requirements that affect a selected
requirement.
 Trace to links indicate requirements that are affected by a selected
requirement.
When a requirement changes, ALM can alert the affected requirement.

Test Plan

Developing a clear and concise test plan is fundamental to successful

application testing. A good test plan enables you to assess the quality of your
application at any point in the application management process.
To outline a strategy for achieving your requirements, as defined in the
Requirements module,. ask yourself two basic questions:
How should you test your application?
 Which testing techniques will you use (stress tests, security tests,
performance and load tests, and so on.)?
 How will you handle defects (severity classification, authorization to
open and close defects, and so on)?
What resources do you require?
 What resources do you require to test (personnel, hardware, and son
on)?
 When will the various tasks be completed?
Example
Consider a flight reservation application that lets you manage flight
scheduling, passenger bookings, and ticket sales. Testing requires designing
both manual and automated tests. You could assign testing personnel with
programming experience the task of designing automated tests, while non-
programmers could design manual tests.

Test Resources

The Test Resources module enables you to manage resources used by

your tests. You can organize your resources by defining a hierarchical Test
Resource tree containing resource folders and resources. For each resource in
the tree, you select and upload a set of resource files to the ALM repository.
These files can be used by one or more tests.
You can then define dependencies between resources and tests.
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Business Components

The Business Components module enables subject matter experts

(SMEs) to work with Business Process Testing (BPT), the HP test automation
solution. You use reusable business process components and flows to create
business process tests. You can also combine manual components to manually
test your application. Access to this module is dependent on your ALM license.
A business component is the building block on which business process
testing is based. A business component is an easily-maintained, reusable unit
comprising one or more steps that perform a specific task and their component
steps describe the condition or state of the application before and after that task.
You can use business components in multiple tests and flows. A business
component can be defined as a manual or automated component. Business
components may require input values from an external source or from other
components, and they can return output values to other components.

Test Execution

You begin test execution by creating test sets and choosing tests to
include in each set. A test set contains a subset of the tests in an ALM project
designed to achieve specific test goals. As your application changes, you can run
the manual and automated tests in your project to locate defects and assess
quality.
You can run ALM tests in different ways. You can:
 Run tests using Functional test sets
 Run tests using Default test sets
Following test runs, you review and analyze test results. Your goal is to
identify failed steps and determine whether a defect has been detected in your
application, or if the expected results of your test need to be updated. You can
validate test results regularly by viewing run data and by generating reports and
graphs.
You can also set a test as a draft run to instruct ALM to ignore the run results.

HP Sprinter

You can run tests manually from ALM, using HP Sprinter. Sprinter
provides advanced functionality and tools to assist you in the manual testing
process. Sprinter is fully integrated with ALM, enabling you to get the maximum
benefit from both solutions.
Manual testing often requires that you leave your testing application to
accomplish tasks related to your test. For example, you might need to use
graphic software to take a screen capture of your application, or you might want
to record a movie of the application during the test, or you might need to switch
to your defect tracking software to report a defect.
Sprinter addresses these needs of the manual testing process, and
enables you to accomplish these tasks without disrupting your test flow. With
Sprinter, you can also perform many of the repetitive and tedious tasks of
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manual testing automatically. Sprinter includes many tools to help you detect
and submit defects. These features ensure that you can perform all the tasks
necessary for your manual test with minimum interruptions to your testing
work.
With Sprinter you can:
 Create and annotate screen captures
 Capture movies of your run
 Record and run macros on your test application
 Automatically enter data into fields in your application
 Automatically include the list of your steps or user actions in any defect
you submit
 Replicate your user actions on multiple machines with different
configurations
Note: Sprinter is not available for ALM Essentials Edition or Performance Center
Edition. If you are not working with Sprinter, you can run tests manually with
the Manual Runner.

Defect Management
Locating and repairing application defects efficiently is essential to the
development process. Using the ALM Defects module, you can report design
flaws in your application and track data derived from defect records during all
stages of the application management process.
You use the Defects module to:
 Create application defects for an ALM projects
 Track defects until application developers and testers determine that the
defects are resolved
Defect records inform members of the application development and
quality assurance teams of new defects discovered by other members. As you
monitor the progress of defect repair, you update the information in your
project.
You can link a defect to the following ALM entities: requirements, tests,
test sets, business process tests, flows, test instances, runs, run steps, and other
defects.
Examples of when defect linkage is useful include:
 A new test is created specifically for a defect. By creating a link between
the test and the defect, you can determine if the test should be run based
on the status of the defect.
 During a manual test run, if you add a defect, ALM automatically creates
a link between the test run and the new defect.
You can share defects across multiple ALM projects. Sharing defects
across multiple ALM projects is available for ALM Edition only.
You share and synchronize defects using the HP ALM Synchronizer.

Reports, Graphs, and Dashboards

ALM provides you with analysis tools that enable you to analyze and
display ALM data in various formats.
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Dashboard Modules
In the Dashboard module, you analyze ALM data by creating graphs,
project reports, and Excel reports. You can also create dashboard pages that
display multiple graphs side-by-side.
The Dashboard contains the following modules:
 Analysis View module – Contains the Analysis tree in which you organize
all of your analysis items. Analysis items can be any of the following
analysis types: graphs, project reports, and Excel reports.
 Analysis Menus tab – Users with the required administrator permissions
also have access to the Analysis Menus tab. This tab enables you to
manage the analysis items that are generated from within the Analysis
menu in specific modules, such as Requirements and Test Lab.
 Dashboard View module – Contains the Dashboard tree in which you
organize dashboard pages. In dashboard pages, you arrange multiple
graphs that you created in the analysis tree, and display them in a single
view.
Additional Analysis Tools
Live Analysis graphs – Enable you to create and display a dynamic graphic
representation of data related to test plans and test sets.

Attachments/What’s New

Clicking the attachment icon for an entity lets you view the list of
attachments. You can open the attached files directly from the list.

Zoom-in and Zoom-out to View Memo Fields/What’s New

Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons have been added to the toolbar for rich
content memo fields.

Key Developer Integration and Collaboration

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Complete Mobile Testing/Test Anywhere

Building a Center of Excellence (CoE)

Flexible Delivery
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Additional Resources
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References and Supplementary Materials

Books and Journals

Micro. Customized Application Lifecycle Management 12.0 Essentials

Student Guide
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
http://hp.com/software/education

Markov, Georgi and Druzhinina, Olga; 2011; Towards an industrial ALM

(Application Lifecycle) Tool Integration; Blekinge Institute of Technology,
School of Computing