Read through this simple guide on Azure DevOps Test Planning and Management. Explore the most important Azure DevOps Services like managing & creating Test plans, Test suites, and Test cases:
Azure DevOps (Previously known as VSTS) is a new cloud-based offering that helps the project teams take care of all aspects of the process for software development.
Azure DevOps Service is a SaaS platform providing tools for better collaboration among teams. It provides tools that help the entire project team capture Requirements, Agile /Traditional Project Planning, Work Item Management, Version Control, Automated Build, Deployment, and manual Testing in a single platform.
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Table of Contents:
Test Planning and Test Management – Azure DevOps Guide
In the last tutorial, we looked at the following:
- Azure DevOps board connection to GitHub repository.
- Repositories and integration with GitHub as a source for the code.
- Pipelines for build and release using a Java Maven example.
In this tutorial, we will look at:
- Managing and creating Test plans, Test suites, and Test cases.
- Link Test cases to Story work items
- Creating configurations
- Creating Test scripts and shared steps
- Running and analyzing manual tests
- Raising defects or bugs
Azure DevOps Test Planning and Management
Enabling Test plans license
Azure DevOps has the ‘Basic’ license for Boards and Repos. For the test management feature in Azure DevOps, you will need to buy/enable the ‘Basic + Test Plan’ license.
To enable the ‘Basic + Test Plan’ license go to your Organization settings -> Billing section and enable the same.
Elevate the Access level for the user
In the Organization Settings, go to the Users section and change the access level for the users to ‘Basic + Test Plans’.
Managing and Creating Test Plans, Suite, Cases
Test plans are used to group test suites and test cases. To start by creating a test plan, navigate to the Test HUB, which is a central place for planning, execution, and analysis of test cases.
Click on Test Plans under the Test HUB to create a New Test Plan.
Enter a name for the Test Plan, and select the Iteration. Click on Create.
In the Test Plan, click to create a new Test Case.
Add the test case name and manual steps as shown.
Add a traceability link to the product backlog item by clicking on the Add link below the Related Work section. Select the link type as a child and select the PBI work item. Click on OK.
Click on Save and Close in the test case window. The test case is now visible in the Test Plan.
Additional test cases can be created and linked to the appropriate product backlog items.
Selecting Environment for a test case to run
The testers must select the environment in which the test case has to run. So if it is a web application, then the Browser and Operating system are required to be defined. To define the environments, select the Configuration tab under Test Plans.
You can see that there is already an existing configuration for Windows 10.
Let’s add a new configuration for Windows 11. Click on Add new value under the All configuration variables -> Operating System
Enter Windows 11 and click on Save.
Click on Browser under the All Configuration variables
Add any other browsers as needed for Windows 11 configuration and Save. We will now create a new test configuration for Windows 11.
Add details for Windows 11 configuration as below and click on Save.
We now need to assign the configuration defined to the test cases in the test plan. In the Test Plan, click on the 3 DOTS and select Assign configurations.
Maybe I want to test on both Windows 10 and 11. So here I would select both configurations and click on Save.
Click on the Execute tab and you will see duplicate test cases created one for each configuration.
The test cases can also be grouped into Test Suites. In the Test Plan, click on the 3 DOTS to create a suite based on the functionality.
Running and Analyzing Manual Tests
We will now see how to run the manual test which will depict the expected behavior of your application. In the Execute tab of the test plan, select the test case and click on Run for web application.
This will now open a Runner or Steps panel where each step includes an Action, which describes the action the tester needs to perform. A step includes an Expected Result, which describes and the user captures the expected result of the action.
Click on Pass or Fail next to each step 
.
So let’s say the 3rd step has failed. I enter a comment and raise a bug to the developer to resolve it.
Click on Create bug once in the 3rd step.
Click on Save & Close.
The final view should look as shown. Click on Save and Close.
Once the developer works on the bug, the tester can then re-run the manual test and get all the steps as passed. The outcome will be shown as Failed.
Analyze the test result
Go to the Charts tab in the test plan and create a New test result chart.
Select the options as shown and click on OK. This shows 1 manual test is run which is Failed and 1 manual test for Windows 10 is not yet run.
Navigate to the Runs tab under the Test Plan and double-click on the most recent test run.
The Run summary tab, as shown below summarizes the test that is run, as well as high-level details on the results of all tests included as part of the run.
Select the Test Results tab. This tab will show the results of the test case along with the results of each step with the bug raised. You can then review the details for the test case.
Normally, in every test case, there could be some repetitive steps. You can create a shared step that can combine multiple steps and can be inserted into any new test case. E.g. open the test case and select the steps for which the shared step needs to be created.
Provide a name and click on Create. Click on Save & Close in the test case.
Create a new test case and insert the shared steps.
Click on Run query. Click on Insert shared steps.
The steps are now inserted into the new test case.
Conclusion
In this article, we have seen the Test Management activities supported by Azure DevOps Service.
This feature is part of the complete development life cycle, which includes the Azure Board and the Build and Release features seen in the previous tutorials.
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