What is Xray?
Xray for Jira is a complete tool for managing manual and automated tests. It allows to manage the complete life cycle of the test phases:
- Campaign preparation and planning
- Design of tests related to requirements (manual and automated)
- Real-time test execution and progress monitoring
- Standard and customizable reports, including test data export
Focus on the essentials: Testing
The quality of your software is guaranteed by your team of testers. And the tool to be implemented within your structure must be adequately benchmarked, to allow your team to optimize its time(easily find its remaining work, validate the User Stories, follow its progress, partition the processing of requests according to the team members, or not ...) in order to focus on the essential: the tests!
Why am I initially resistant to the tool?
The use of Xray requires the handling of a multitude of specific applications:
- Test plan
- Test Set
- Precondition
- Execution subtask
- Test
- Test execution
It is important to master all of these contexts to avoid a "gas factory" effect when deploying the tool in connection with your requirements projects. The following anecdote illustrates what happens when the Xray configuration is not mastered.
During one of my former experiences as a tester, Jira was in place, and the company had decided to decommission HPQC (ALM) to switch to Xray for Jira. Xray thus became the heart of our test repository, and as no reference person had been designated or trained, the setup was laborious.
It's a fact: the Xray tool is not preconfigured like most other test tools, ALM, Squash, etc. For example, you can forget about your test plan tree. It exists in Xray but it will not be the central element of your tool.
The implementation of the tool without rigorous parameterization, without knowledge of its operating logic, and without a common vision caused a loss of time, money, and motivation for the entire team.
The lack of change management also caused us to lose automatisms with each change in configuration.
However, we were convinced by the tool's reporting capabilities. But were our indicators really up to date if the acceptance team was underwater with a tool that was poorly configured and complex to use?
So why is Xray finally right for you?
First of all, the price, the sinews of war. Xray is still cheaper than some of its competitors (ALM). Fortunately, this is not the only argument in its favor. This kind of purely financial criterion should not become the most decisive element in your test tooling strategy.
The first strong point of Xray is its excellent integration with Jira. You will be able to manage your tests in the software suite that follows your User Stories and your developments.
The second strong point of Xray is its ability to adapt to your organization and your processes. The different Xray items are managed like Jira requests. It is therefore possible to define your own workflows (life cycle), your own screens and your own custom fields.
Everything can be optimized with the Xray tool, but to do so, you must deploy the tool in a "structuring" manner. That is to say, you need to focus on simplicity of use and anticipate the integration with your existing data. It would be counterproductive to pollute your User Stories with a multitude of Xray links, for example.
It is also necessary to opt for a simplistic parameterization (as lean as possible) and to reduce to the minimum the types of requests to use.
Examples of questions to ask yourself:
- Does the execution subtask offered by Xray really add value to my testing process?
- Do we need the test set + test plan application type or is one of the application types sufficient?
- Should the test environment be integrated into the requirements project, or should it be a separate project?
- How to optimize over time(dashboards, custom fields, types of requests ...) to cover the needs of receivers and management?
Because of its flexible configuration, Xray can meet your needs point by point. However, this requires, in my opinion, a good reflection before its implementation.
Xray, a powerful tool if used properly
Xray is a very rich plugin in options (even too much) but as it is optimizable from A to Z, it will be up to you to make the right choices at the beginning of its production.
Tip : " To be big, you must learn to be small" .
It is therefore wise to define a common vision when setting up this tool:
- within your entire team (PO, devs, integration...) and more conscientiously with your test team(s).
But also:
- Contact external specialists on this plugin to put the tool into production within your company.
- Set up a real change management system or at least synchronization points with your recipe teams, to indicate the upcoming changes.
Xray can become a real asset for the management of your requests:
- It allows your entire IT team to follow the progress of the tests,
- It gives your acceptance team greater visibility by being at the heart of your Jira instance (which will encourage team investment and exchanges between the test and development teams).
Xray is therefore a great tool, provided that it is well configured to meet the specific needs of your organization.
