What is the Test Director Testing Process? What are the phases involved in it?

Mercury provided the world with its first global test management solution popularly known as the test director. Test director has helped many of the organizations in the deployment of very high quality software systems and applications in a quick and efficient manner. 

There are 3 module requirements of the test director on which it operates namely:

1. Test plan
2. Test lab
3. Defects

The above mentioned three module requirements seem to be well integrated providing a way for smooth flow of the information between the various phases of testing.

Up on adding the script editor to all the modules any methodology and best practice can be enforced or followed by the test director based up on the customized requirements of the organization. 

There are several facilities and features that able the users to customize the test director as per the requirements of their projects for capturing the data as needed in the whole testing process such as:

1. Greater number of available user fields
2. Ability to add memo fields
3. Creating input masks

Following processes are incorporated in the test director testing process:

1. Requirements management
2. Scheduling
3. Planning
4. Executing tests
5. Issue management
6. Project status analyzation

What are phases in Test Director Testing Process?

1. Planning Tests: 

In this phase the application software to be tested is broken down in to various test subjects and a project is build. The testing goals as well as objectives are defined keeping all the requirements in view.The following three things are examined so that it can be determined that how and in what way the testing process will take place:

a)   Application software

b)   System environment and

c)   Testing resources

- Next step in this phase, is to provide a definition for each of the test subjects by further dividing them in to test director modules to be tested.  

- A test plan tree is drafted representing the hierarchy among the test subjects. 

- Tests are defined and broken in to steps where each step gives the description of a particular operation that is to be performed. 

- For each test, the output that is expected is determined. 

- Now the turn comes to automate the tests if you are following the automation testing. 

- Here, you will need help from Winrunner for creating the automated test scripts in test script language or TSL. 

- Once all is done, go through your test plan and analyze all the reports, graphs etc.

- Have a rough determination of whether your test plan will be able to meets the defined goals or not.

2. Execution of the Tests: 

- Tests are grouped into suites and running them. 

- Once you have the test schedule in your hand you can start assigning the tasks to the testers and start executing. 

- The graphs and the reports thus generated after the execution of the tests help in the determination of the progress level of the test execution. 

- While the execution of the test suites is in progress there is a need that you keep analyzing how the testing process is going on with the help of the graphs as well as reports.

3. Tracking of the Defects: 

- In this phase the defects that you discovered need to be reported to the management.

- When the defects are repaired, you need to analyze how the repair process is going on. 

- Information and details regarding all the discovered defects are to be stored in the data base meant for storing defect data. 

- After the repair process is complete, put the application once again through the tests and check if again some discrepancy is encountered. 

- After you are done with the analyzation process you can decide when the project is to be released.