Quality Centre: All about it

Quality Centre is a test management tool that provides a web interface to manage the test cases from
Writing the Requirements (Requirements Module is used to tracker requirements),
Planning tests for those requirements (Test Plan module is used to track the tests associated with a requirement),
Executing the tests (Test Lab module is used to track the execution of tests and associated defects),
Defects (Defects module is used to track the execution of defects raised while executing the tests in Test Lab)


Note: as a tester you're not expected to know the technical information of where the quality centre application is deployed & which server it is running on rather your QC Admin will provide you with a log-in credentials as soon as you join the company and you will soon find all the details about in no time.

Quality Center Login Procedure:

Quality centre is a quality management tool that is widely used to manage the test planning, execution and Defects. User can write a requirement, create tests for that particular requirement, run the tests and create defects thus completing a test cycle using Quality Centre.

Typically quality centre can be accessed using a link provided by your QC administrator. It could be something like http://localhost:8080/qcbin/start_a.jsp or http://localhost:8080/qcbin/start_a.html depending on the deployment server etc

Here localhost is server address, 8080 is the port number where the application server is running. It could be something like http://qc.companyname.com/qabin/start_a.html where companyname is the company you're working for.

Steps to follow to start working on QC are:

1. Obtain the link to access QC from your team lead or if you have access to QC administrator

2. Obtain authentication details from the above mentioned people

3. Obtain the Domain name & Project name that you should use to see ONLY your project. You can find this information from your project lead

4. Access the link obtained for QC by entering in to a IE browser & hit Enter. Remember, QC can not be accessed in Firefox or Chrome or any other latest browsers. Make sure the browser you're using is in the list of compatible browsers

5. Now enter userID, Password and click Authenticate button. This would enable Domain, Project combo-box where user can select the correct project name, domain name to which he has access to. Click Login button to complete Login

User Interface & Architecture: Depending on your installation, you may see the modules like Cycles/ Releases, Requirements, Business Components, Test Plan, Test Lab, Defects.

Business components module is used only when required in addition to other modules. This is completely installation based. This is widely/ specifically used in SAP based application testing, however this is not limited to only SAP application testing.

Write Requirements:

How and where do we write requirements in Quality Centre
Requirements module will consist of a space available for user to create a requirement or user story so user can plan writing tests in Test Plan module specific to an already existing requirement. A Typical requirements module will look like below (screen shot taken from Hp's website for reference)

Writing a requirement would require the following details. Number of mandatory fields would be installation based. 

1. Name: Name of the requirement. This could be unique description or a brief description of what is this requirement for?
2. Author: Who actually created this requirement? This is field will get populated automatically with the user ID with which the user is logged in to Quality Centre
3. Creation Date: The Date on which this requirement was initially created
4. Creation Time: Time on which this requirement was initially created
5. Modified: Last modified date/time value. Automatically gets populated as soon one of any fields of the requirements is updated. This log is maintained and is available to view under History TAB
6. Priority: Priority of the requirement. It could be something like 1 - Urgent, 2 - Major, 3 - High, 4 - Medium, 5 - Normal etc. This could vary from 1 installation to the other
7. Req Id: An automatically populated field. This is a unique ID for every requirement created in the database
8. Description: a details description of the requirement giving full details from A to Z
9. Req Type: Type of the requirement is something to suggest whether this requirement was initiated/ taken from? Example, business requirements document or a user story taken from acceptance criteria set in the product's system requirement specification and so on
10. Product: which product this requirement belongs to? there could be a number of projects/ products running in a company. To differentiate the requirements from 1 specific product area to the other
11. Reviewed: who reviewed this requirement as to certify this is right
12. Targert Release: release name under which this requirement is set to be released? Ex: In a waterfall model it could be something like "April 2012" or if its in an agile environment it could be something like "Sprint 25"
13. Targert Cycle: In which cycle you would expect this to run thru? Ex: Regression Cycle, or Cycle4 or Sprint12 etc

You can find more about requirements module available in HP's Quality Centre module at the following link  https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_content.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1-11-127-24^37802_4000_100__