In my company my team of manual testers is evaluating to use Aqua as our test management tool, switching from Confluence.
In the past I have only used Zephyr Scale and I think is a good tool but too much expensive at moment since we have a restricted budget.
We have started the trial with Aqua and I feel that it’s not very user friendly as Zephyr but I am still discovering things and I think it can be powerful when it comes to reports.
Would you recommend it as a testing management tool? What are the pros you have found using it?
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I have to say , you can get a pretty good idea of how “bad” a tool is by asking in user forums, how good a tool is is not something you hear often. It’s just a bias in the data, happy users use the product and have a good time not having to google for help. I wonder if you were on Zephyr Scale for reasons more than just test case management and that Squad would probably have fitted better and saved money.
I have no experience with Aqua, however what I can do is offer my experience how we did choose a solution in the past.
Are you evaluating just Aqua? What are true reasons for switching? If it’s only money that is the reason, I’m afraid you won’t find an ideal solution for your use case - only compromises.
In one of my previous companies, we made analysis of several test management tools. Based on several criteria (e.g. possiblity of writing BDD, integration with Jira, links to automated test cases etc), we chose to evaluate X-Ray and TestRail. So the company provided us with a month of trial usage of both (first month one tool, second month the other tool). After the end of both trial we made a spreadsheet, a sort of questionnaire that every QA in the trial filled with their own experience.
So then we gathered all in a session where results were presented and after some more debate of pros and contras we chose the winner. Not everyone was happy, but it’s what the majority was satisfied with. In hindsight, it might not have been an ideal pair for evaluation since both tools are owned by the same company.
TLDR: make sure to have a list of requirements what a test management tool should have for your use case and then measure all against that. Sure, money budget is a valid requirement too.
awesome question and awesome answers.
Ivan brings up a very valid point: every tool will have limitations you will have to live with. the goal is to make sure none of those limitations are critical.
Im also interested in hearing about test case management tools. I last used Azure DevOps to manage tests and Im almost a decade behind on the new hotness tools are.
Fun fact: the example that I gave, about choosing between Xray and Testrail, the tool we were migrating from, was actually Testpad
In the little time that I have been using it, my experience with it was horrific. Cumbersome UI, automation is not an option, cannot export much, etc… It was hindering our testing team and that was the reason to move away from Testpad. Possibly I thought of it as horrific because I’ve experienced a lot of better and well versed tools in my past.
But to Testpad’s defense, the company “outgrew” Testpad. It was working fine for a long time, I guess it’s good for small and short test cases but whenever you have something more than a test title, it becomes more complex.
At least that’s my personal opinion, or how I remember it from 2 years ago.
Interesting. We didn’t actually use Testpad but I really liked its bare bones nature when I looked at it a while back when we were switching from an in-house tool to “something else”. But things like limited export I can see being a pain if you need objective evidence or something.
it is not as much an objective evidence as history. Imagine having two thousand test cases written in one tool and you want to move to another. Not having a good export options can be very problematic, forcing you to stay unhappy at current tool.
But like I said, this is when you have complex scenarios, Testpad is good for simple apps and simple scenarios. That was few years ago, maybe they added bunch of new features and I am giving them unjust hard times
