All about the Testing Applications with Microsoft Test Manager Course

By Anthony Borton

The 2-day Testing Applications with Microsoft Test Manager course is currently our most popular Visual Studio 2010 training course. For every public delivery of the course we are usually running 4 or 5 private in-house courses for companies. So why the demand for this course?

Microsoft has invested a significant amount of time and effort focusing on improving the testing capabilities of Visual Studio 2010. Here are a few of the key things you will learn by attending the Testing Applications with Microsoft Test Manager course.

Test Case Management

Learn how to create a Test Plan and configure properties for the test plan including test settings and configurations.  You’ll create Test Suites and link them to your requirements for traceability and reporting. During the course you’ll see how to write effective test cases and organize them for convenience and reporting.

Executing manual tests

Microsoft’s new Manual Test Runner is a purpose built application to allow you to step through your test cases and see how you need to interact with your application under test. You can record an action recording for a test case which will then allow you to fast forward one or more steps on subsequent test executions. This can be a huge time saving feature.

What’s changed? What do I need to retest?

Using the Test Impact Data Collector, you can select two different builds (eg. 2.1.10.1 & 2.1.12.1) and with the click of a mouse button see exactly what changes (work items) have gone in the newer build. You can also find out which test cases should be executed based on what has changed between the builds. Why run 200 tests when you only need to run 20 of them?

Raising data-rich bugs

One of the challenges a tester has is knowing what information and how much information to include in a bug report. Often testers don’t have time to include as much detail as they would like and developers invest more time trying to reproduce a bug then they might otherwise need to. Using the Test Runner, you can raise data rich bug reports that can include a wealth of helpful information for the developer. Through the selection of data collectors, much of the relevant information is automatically added to the bug report when the testers raises the bug. This means less time writing the bug and for developers, possibly a significant reduction in the time it takes to reproduce the bug.

Automated UI testing

The Mastering Testing with Visual Studio 2010 course will cover creating automated user interface tests called Coded UI tests. Coded UI tests can be generated from manual test action recordings or they can be recorded using the Coded UI test recorder. These tests have the great benefit of being able to be automated completely and included as part of the build process.

Report on test progress

Another time consuming task for testers is often creating the testing reports needed for management or to record the daily progress of your testing. In the course we’ll look at how to use some of the out-of-the-box reports and how you can quickly and easily create your own reports.

While the courses covers more than I have listed above, these are some of the most important things you’ll learn how to use by attending the Mastering Testing with Visual Studio 2010 course.

Our the next Testing Applications with Microsoft Test Manager course is scheduled for February 16th. Hope to see you there! 

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