Anybody using Test Management in EA?

[ebeb]

Hi there,

I am just evaluating if we use test management in EA. I'd appreciate any comments from anybody who does use it or did not use it for a reason.

I read the white paper, that shows some nice features. Especially generating JUnit test of classes is good. Then I read about the build, run and debug features as well as test result integration and I'm not really sure how this works and how practical it is.

I mean, can I define a test cycle that automatically runs defined 100 test cases and fill in the test result into the appropriate fields in EA? Or do I have to run each test one by one?

How would I do this e.g. using Java? (just a brief sketch would be nice)

After running the test, we'd like to see some graphical output, especially the number of open bugs over time as a graph (I guess it's not possible).

And how about integration of other tools? If we see that it is not everything possible with EA, that we might choose Jira or Trac e.g. I saw Enterprise Tester which is even more expensive than EA itself.

So, really any thought and experiances would be helpful!

Thanks,

Jan

[Bryce Day]

We built Enterprise Tester because we felt that the EA capabilities in testing were good but we couldn't easily get the statistics you are speaking of or run multiple test cycles using the same generated EA scripts. Additionally, most organisations have an issue management tool that is used across a wider audience so one of our aims was to allow them to utilise their pre-existing issue management tool and pass defects to it.

"And how about integration of other tools? If we see that it is not everything possible with EA, that we might choose Jira or Trac e.g. I saw Enterprise Tester which is even more expensive than EA itself."

This is an interesting comment because ET is a web based tool that operates a concurrent user licensing system so the per user pricing is about the same price as a concurrent EA license and cheaper that other test management tools that have less functionality.

Another of our aims was to create a world leading 'tool chain' that provides comparable functionality to HP Quality Centre or the Rational tool sets but at 10% the cost - as Sparx have done. The combination of EA-ET-JIRA or ET-JIRA achieves this.

The team here would be interested in any thoughts you have around ET.

Thanks and regards
Bryce

[ebeb]

Hello Bryce,

Additionally, most organisations have an issue management tool that is used across a wider audience so one of our aims was to allow them to utilise their pre-existing issue management tool and pass defects to it.

this is correct and in fact we are looking for such a feature. I actually worked with jira in previous projects and find it quite valuable.
But as I work for a start-up company, we have to reduce costs where it is possible as you can imagine.
EA was the perfect mach for us. It is widely accepted, provides good support, has comprehensive feature set and a very attractive pricing.

Now, when I assume ET needs existing licenses of EA and Jira which are both oviously not for free, I currently does not see the benefit and thus the need for our company to invest in both ET and Jira get a reasonable testing system. Moreover, we simply couldn't afford all three licenses without a clear benefit that amortize the expenditures.

But maybe you could enlighten me.

Never the less, I'm still interested in other opinions, especially those who managed to use a stand-alone EA for testing and reporting.

Cheers,

Jan

[Bryce Day]

Jan,

Enterprise Tester is a web based test management tool that can be run on it's own without EA or JIRA. So you don't need either to be able to use the tool.

If you were to use EA-ET-JIRA as an end-to-end solution then yes you would need to purchase licenses of each.

ET has a personal license which allows you one named user for approx $300 USD and JIRA has a free personal license. So you could create an end-to-end solution for approx $600 for a single user.

For a small organisation you would most likely go for a 5 licenses of EA 5 user license of ET 1500USD and a 5 user JIRA license 1200USD
which would allow you to run a full end to end for approximately $4,500USD. This solution could be compared to a Rational end-to-end but we all know it wouldn't be anywhere near this price.

Now ET has basic defect tracking capability build it so you could just purchase EA-ET as an option to work with removing the JIRA cost.

The key for us is that EA is a fantastic tool for Architecture, Analysis and Design but is not a specialist issue management or test management tool. By combining the 3 tools you get specialist tools is each area and an end-to-end solution allowing traceability across elements while also improving your SDLC reuse, saving costs.
E.g. analysis we have done shows that the EA-ET auto generation of test scripts will give approximate savings of 4% as a minimum on your total project cost i.e. a $100,000 project will have savings of $4,000 (which more than pays for the ET licence cost)

Hopefully this answers some of your questions?
Bryce