Training Day #5- Reporting

Test Execution Status Report

Daily/Weekly Test Execution Report:

What is it? Generally, this is a communication sent out to establish transparency to the QA team’s activities of the day during the Test cycle – including both Defect information and Test case run information.

Who should it go to?  – Normally, the Development team, Environment support team, Business Analyst, and project team are the recipients/meeting participants. The Test Plan is the best place for you to find this information.

What does a Test Execution Status Report contain? – 10 points

1. Number of Test cases planned for that day
2. Number of Test cases executed – that day
3. Number of Test cases executed overall
4. Number of Defects encountered that day/and their respective states
5. Number of Defects encountered so far/and their respective states
6. Number of critical Defects- still open
7. Environment downtimes – if any
8. Showstoppers – if any
9. Attachment of the test execution sheet / Link to the Test Management Tool where the test cases are placed
10. Attachment to the Bug report/link to the Defect/Test /Management tool used for incident management

The above 10 points, if you notice closely are the raw data. Reporting the facts is one thing and reporting some ‘smart’ facts is another. How do we refine this information?

• Shows the overall status with a color indicator. For Example, Green – on time, Orange- Slightly behind but can absorb the delay, Red- Delayed.
• Include some simple metrics like Pass % of test cases so far, defect density, % of severe defects; by doing this you are not just giving numbers, you are actually providing a glimpse of the quality of the product that you are testing.
• If a significant phase is complete- highlight that.
• If there is a critical defect that is going to block all/a part of future execution- highlight that.
• If using a presentation, make sure to include some graphs to make a better impact.

For Example, the below graph is a representation of the number of open defects, module-wise: