How to Integrate JIRA with qTest: A Step by Step Guide

We have provided an extensive, step-by-step guide on how to integrate JIRA with QTest for your benefit. Let’s get started. 

Atlassian Confluence has been explained in very simple terms for your understanding in our previous tutorial.

At STH, we believe in sharing best practices, tools, techniques, and processes. We also provide tips that we have enjoyed learning and benefited from using overtime. We believe this makes our day to day tasks easier and helps us grow as effective testers.

Suggested Reading => In-Depth Training tutorials on JIRA

This article is part of our attempt to explain the process of the integration of JIRA with QTest to gain the benefits of test management linked to requirements management.

What is JIRA

JIRA is a leading issue and project tracking tool that caters to agile QA, business and development teams. JIRA also allows you to manage and track any kind of unit work in the form of “issues” bugs, stories, project tasks with a predefined workflow.

Also read => Complete JIRA tutorials

What is QTest

QTest by QASymphony is a test management solution that provides teams of all sizes with the capability to easily, manage, organize and report on software testing and test case management efforts.

Also read => Hands-on qTest review

Why you should integrate JIRA with QTest

When you pair JIRA’s best-of-breed issues and project tracking capabilities with QTest’s innovative test case management abilities, the results will change the way your development and testing teams work.

Here are a few of the benefits of integrating JIRA and QTest:

1. Seamlessly move requirements and defects from qTest into JIRA
2. Get test coverage reports for JIRA issues
3. Real-time bug status changes viewable against Test Run Executions
4. Easily access a detailed traceability matrix report of requirements and test case associations
5. Auto-fill test run results in JIRA issues. No syncing is required!

How to integrate and what do I need to do for the process

Check out this JIRA test management integration video for everything you need to know about the process. The integration is seamless and super easy to set up.

The tools are now connected.  What is the next step?

Let’s start by going through the steps of the resulting integrated requirement-test-defect management solution.

First of all, notice how the interface changes. You will no longer see the “defects” tab. This is because all defects raised through QTest will be created in JIRA as issue type “BUG”.

Check this – no defects tab.

Step #1) Retrieve requirements

Requirements are always managed in a centralized way by JIRA. That part stays as is. But test management should start with requirements too, shouldn’t it? So, instead of having to create a brand new instance, the integration provides a way in which a certain issue type from JIRA can be retrieved into QTest.

Usually, the requirements are of the issue type- “New feature”, “Improvement” or “Story”.

Once the requirements are downloaded, they will appear as:

Note that the icons are different. JIRA and QTest ID’s both exist as well as their properties too. The requirements are read-only here. This can be linked to TCs that exist within JIRA. Any changes to these requirements in JIRA will be reflected in the refresh.

Step #2) Create test cases and link them to requirements

This process is the same with or without JIRA integration. Test cases once linked to a requirement (retrieved from JIRA) will result in a JIRA issue link so the developers can see the tests/tests associated with it.

This not only improves awareness of what cross-functional teams are up to, but also supports test-driven development.

Check out the link as it appears in JIRA:

Step #3) Create test cycles and run

This step too does not change at all with the integration. Test teams will go ahead and create Test cycles and/or Test suites within QTest and carry out test execution.

If a certain Test run results in a failure or if a defect reported is linked to a Test run, then this relationship reflects in JIRA. Two things happen here:

Number one: The defect gets linked to the requirement (if the test case was linked to a retrieved JIRA requirement).

Number two: The defect will get a link to the Test run whose failure resulted in the issue.

Step #4) Report defects

When a test run or a test step failure results in a defect and a QTest user clicks on the “BUG icon-”, JIRA Create Issue page (with issue type: Bug, auto selected) opens up automatically. Enter the information and create the issue.

The links are created as described in the earlier step.

Step #5) Analytics and Reports

For a quick look-up on the JIRA-QTest integration, JIRA users are provided with a QTest Widget. The following information is available on a real-time basis:

• Unresolved Defects: By Test Run Status
• Resolved Defects: By Test Run Status
• Synced Requirements without Test Case
• Top 10 Synced Requirements with Defects submitted from QTest

QTest reports are all available as usual and can be created around JIRA retrieved assets too.

Benefits of integrating QTest and JIRA

#1) Testers can be testers and developers can be developers. Test management systems are built for testers. Take a look at the QTest UI. The sequence of actions you would normally perform in a test project (STLC-Requirement gathering-Test design-Test execution-defects) is how the interface is organized. JIRA is more development centric, so you will not find this structure there.

#2) If your team is into TDD or BDD, your development team can view the tests created and link to each requirement right from their JIRA interface.

#3) Any updates to the requirements will be automatically refreshed into QTest. So there will never be discord.

#4) Defects are centralized in JIRA. This does not mean QTest users have to log out of their QTest instance when they have to log a defect. When you choose the option to log a bug, QTest automatically invokes the JIRA instance and returns back to the QTest when the bug is submitted.

#5) Developers can see the “Test run” information linked to a defect, so if there are multiple runs or if the developer wants to know if the defect was retested as the latest test run or not, they can do that from the JIRA interface itself.

#6) Reports both at JIRA and QTest. Through the QTest Widget in JIRA, the analytics can be viewed that show the highlights of the integration. QTest reports, on the other hand, use the JIRA retrieved elements to provide test statistics.

Conclusion

We hope you find this tutorial interesting and useful.

Tool collaboration is a trend that QA, business, and development teams are most thankful for (at least I hope they are) and integrations for JIRA test management, specifically QTest, is a definite benchmark.

Do give it a try and let us know if this works for your team! Post your feedback and questions in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you. 

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