Why Invest in a Jira Test Management Tool

Now, Jira is a bug tracking and project management tool developed by Atlassian. It offers several features that make it so popular with developers as well as QA professionals all over the world today. While this no doubt that Jira works best when it comes to project management, the interesting thing is that people are not happy with just using it as a project management tool. It's all because of the user friendly features that Jira offers to its users, which makes them want to use the platform for test case management as well.

Now, since Jira was never intended to be used as a test management tool, it does bring some limitations. Given below are the advantages and disadvantages of using Jira for this purpose.

Advantages:

• Supports manual execution.
• Provision for users to create single workflow for developers and QA teams as well.
• Provision for users to create custom issue types, and this is used to create “test cases” as an issue type.
• Familiarity of users with its interface.

Disadvantages:

• No provision for traceability reporting.
• Does not allow user to group executions and cycles.
• Does not support integration with frameworks other than the CI server.
• No in-built functionality to support test case management.
• Cannot be used for version control handling.
• No provision for repeated execution.

While the advantages are great, it's the disadvantages that create the need for a more enhanced approach to test management with some other tool that compliments the advantages that Jira offers. This is where the need for a good Jira test management tool comes into the picture.

Now, what is the Jira test management tool? It's nothing but an advanced automation and test management tool that can be seamlessly integrated with Jira to enhance the test management capabilities of Jira. The automation tool integrates with Jira through an add-on that is available on the Atlas in Marketplace. QARA Enterprise is an example of such a tool that integrates with the help of the QARAJ add-on. Zephyr is another example. These add-ons are power-packed with features to enhance the functionality of Jira to manage test cases and analyse test performance through detailed reports.

There are several advanced features that Jira test management tool offers and here are a few of them.

• It allows QA professionals to manage test cases within the Jira interface. With the provision to track the quality of software by creating, executing, tracking and reporting QA issues just like any other issue type in Jira.
• For those who are familiar with the interface of Jira, a tool like this is a delight because its UI is exactly the same as that of JIRA. This makes it easy to learn using the tool faster and also offers a level of comfort.
• These tools are also integrated with other platforms like Bamboo, Jenkins, MTM, etc. To enhance the overall automation experience.
• A Jira test management tool is designed with powerful reporting capabilities through quality metrics.

The last one is a key advantage. Does the provision to create various reports based on different parameters that allowed the QA team deep insight into the QA performance as well as the project status, execution details and more. The graphical reports make it easy to understand and analyse dance performance.

So that was about the key benefits of using a Jira test management tool. It gives one the best of both Worlds, which means the familiarity of the Jira interface and the advanced test management capabilities of a new age test automation tool.