Test Management tool selection

Most QA teams (especially start ups where you have to start testing before you can say the word "test management") start by writing test cases in Excel files, word documents and post-its ;)

As a lead/manager, your first task should be to end the madness and start using a test management tool or evaluate the current system and replace if it's ineffecient.

Why?
To render tests repeatable and to track, archive and present test results to the stakeholders (ps: these are the magic words to convince management to let you set up the tool)

What?
I am not here to sell a specific product, just to suggest how to arrive at one.

Allright, then ..how?

Considerations/criteria for selecting a test management system:

1.BUDGET:
Determine the budget ceiling from stakeholders/management. There is no point wasting time evaluating tools that serve you pancakes in bed if they are out of your reach.

If the budget is too low or non existent, research freewares. Downside is set-up and configuration time and mostly lack of features. But most are better than post-its :)

2.LICENSE:
Budgets are not written in stone.. they change.. frequently! So, evaluate your selection based on the licensing model that's preditable

License/cost models:
Per registered user license, recurring cost
Per seat/concurrent user count license, persistent (one time cost)
Recurrring cost for max count (not per user)
Persistent / one time cost for max count or independant of cost
Hosted offsite vs Installed onsite

Persistent/One time costs are higher because it's Capital Expense. It will pay for itself in reasonable time frame and become free afterwards

To arrive at the best license model, you need to:

- Predict reasonably the growth of team
- Ascertain the possible concurrent connections to the app (for instance offshore/onshore models have lesser concurrency then team count)
- Length of time of usage of the tool
- Offsite hosting takes away the rigour of managing hardware and software and upgrades
- Availability of hardware and personnel to manage onsite installation vs offsite hosting


3.FEATURES:

- Intuitive and configurable interface
- Configurable fields across all components (example: able to modify/add test case fields, result fields etc)
- Import test cases from other documents/excel/applications
- Export test cases into files
- Search/ filter interface
- Modify test cases / Bulk update test cases
- Assign test cases to individual QA
- Execute/assign results to tests via sessions
- Track and archive test session results
- Integration with other SDLC apps or tools used by the team
- Associate failed cases with bugs
- Good result reporting interface
- Web applications have the merit that you can provide tests and results as URLs anywhere for quick and direct access
- Scalability - Evaluate the app/tool loading it with considerable tests and sessions and check performance (essential for web apps, most essential for hosted apps)