HP Managed Software Solutions forQuality Center best practicesWhite paper

Table of contentsExecutive overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

Why best practices? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

HP Managed Software Solutions for Products, People and Processes . . . . . . . . . . . .3

HP Managed Software Solutions methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Implementation phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

HP Quality Center best practices overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

HP Quality Center best practices examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Quality group personnel profiles and skill levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Test data planning and creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

Project customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Executive overviewIT applications must run efficiently, effectively andconsistently to meet the needs of your business.Fortunately, HP Quality Center software—a suite ofapplications and services for the IT service deliveryand management lifecycle—puts into place and usesthe right resources to enable your business to succeed.HP Quality Center helps automate key qualityactivities, including requirement management, testplanning, development and execution of functionaland business process tests, and defect management.

Our best practices help you succeed during your HP Quality Center implementation. They cover allaspects of HP Quality Center deployment andoperation, including product setup and administration,organizational design, process implementation,continual process improvement and return oninvestment (ROI) measurement. Using these bestpractices, HP Managed Software Solutions can helpyour business succeed faster, at a reduced price andwith less risk during the implementation process.

A key component of HP best practices is HP ManagedSoftware Solutions for Products, People and Processes.This is the model we use to successfully introduce HP Quality Center into an organization. By bundlingall of these services together, we can help you build a better IT organization. You gain state-of-the-artquality management and automated testing products,a skilled team, and proven methods to improve testmanagement, test execution, results analysis and defectreporting and tracking.

HP Managed Software Solutions for Products, Peopleand Processes is applied through the HP ManagedSoftware Solutions methodology, a gradual approachto integrating HP Quality Center into your organization.The HP Managed Software Solutions methodologyhelps you apply HP best practices so you have thetools and knowledge you need.

In this white paper, we will introduce you to HP QualityCenter best practices delivered through HP ManagedSoftware Solutions for Quality Center and HP FunctionalTesting software. These products allow HP QualityCenter to provide continual value to your organization.

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HP Quality Center software—a suite of applications and servicesfor the IT service delivery andmanagement lifecycle.

Why best practices?The benefits of even the most advanced qualitymanagement system can be lost when it is notimplemented properly, when an organization’spersonnel lack proper knowledge, or whenappropriate processes are not implemented.Unrealized benefits only represent a fraction of thelosses that can result from late application delivery,inferior user experience and breakdowns in criticalbusiness processes due to ineffective qualitymanagement. You may also suffer losses fromduplicating work efforts and from downtime thatdamages the company’s image.

Using HP Quality Center best practices, you canachieve the benefits of HP Quality Center, including:

• Faster time to realize improvements and value

• Lower risk of implementation failure

• Reduced cost

Our best practices offer real-world knowledge, nottheoretical or abstract advice. These best practices havebeen documented by HP experts who have creatednew solutions to standard implementations andchallenging service delivery issues. Throughout everyHP Quality Center implementation, we apply these bestpractices to your specific situation, creating world-classprocesses for your company to drive long-term success.

HP Managed Software Solutions forProducts, People and ProcessesAchieving ongoing, long-term improvement in softwarequality takes more than just installing the latest andbest technology. Your teams must be able to make bestuse of the products, and you must update existingprocesses to include these best practices.

HP uses a threefold approach called HP ManagedSoftware Solutions for Products, People and Processes.Our best practices address these three aspects:

ProductsWe install the appropriate HP Quality Centercomponents, configure them in the best way for your situation, and integrate them into your existinghardware and software infrastructure. The HP teamhelps you properly install and configure the entire HP Quality Center environment, including foundation,applications and dashboard. We also integrate theseinto your IT environment, with special considerationsfor network, security and other systems. Whendeployed through HP Managed Software Solutions, HP Quality Center is run on HP hardware andinfrastructure and staffed by HP experts so you canfocus on your critical IT quality initiatives.

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PeopleWe begin by training your team to most effectively use our products and processes. We mentor your teamthrough the process of quality management and testautomation on critical applications using classroomand real-world experience. Your team members alsobecome familiar with the interfaces between eachgroup and learn how to rely on each other. Finally, we help you design an improved organizationalstructure to operate HP Quality Center.

ProcessesOperating HP Quality Center and delivering qualityapplications requires specialized experience andexpertise. We help you create world-class processes by applying best practices to your specific situation.These include quality management, requirementsmanagement, test planning and execution, defecttracking, test automation, result analysis, HP QualityCenter processes and HP Quality Center administration,among others. We also help you integrate thesequality processes into your other IT processes.

In summary, HP Managed Software Solutions forProducts, People and Processes addresses the threefundamental elements—HP products, your people and your processes—that enable you to improve thequality of your delivered IT applications.

HP Managed Software SolutionsmethodologyHP Managed Software Solutions methodology is aproven approach designed to successfully launch HPQuality Center and improve the quality of applicationsacross your entire organization. The methodology isbased on the following five defining principles:

• Concentrate on all aspects required to successfullyinstill change in your organization: technologyintroduction, people enablement and process change.This three-part approach—known as Products, Peopleand Processes—is the basis for all HP services.

• Provide a practical approach. Start with an achievableobjective and build on each success. For instance,you can introduce HP Quality Center slowly and then build toward complete implementation acrossthe organization when you’re ready. This gradualapproach also allows flexibility, enabling us to helpyou implement different processes as needed.

• Work toward success as quickly as possible. HP believes you should see rapid results from yourinvestment. In the case of HP Quality Center, thisoften means that we provide a pilot project as part of the implementation. During this process, ourexperts will help test one of your most importantapplications. This allows you to learn how toeffectively use HP Quality Center while you deliverimproved quality to your organization.

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• Follow specific steps based on best practices. We have successfully implemented HP productsthousands of times. Through these successes andindustry expertise, we have created an extensive set of best practices to help you launch and use HP Quality Center with the assistance of ourexperienced consultants.

• Enable your self-sufficiency. One of our primarygoals is to help you learn how to use our products as quickly as possible so that you can get the mostfrom your investment. We use a gradual approach to implementation that includes assistance from HP consultants. They apply best practices and createprocesses customized to your organization so yourteam can achieve your desired business objectivesusing HP Quality Center.

Implementation phasesHP Managed Software Solutions methodology directlyguides the implementation of HP Quality Center inyour organization. The process consists of differentphases that help you implement our products fromconception to completion in incremental steps. Thisallows the test management and functional testautomation platform and processes to be customized to your organization’s specific needs. It also enablesyou to become fluent in the products while under theguidance of the HP Managed Software Solutions team.

HP Managed Software Solutions for Quality Centerand HP Functional Testing software offer testmanagement and functional test automation,respectively. As part of HP Quality Center, theseproducts can be implemented separately or together.

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1.

Assess2.

Scope3.

Design4.

Implement5.

Validate

6.

Realize

Figure 1. HP Managed SoftwareSolutions methodology

AssessDuring the initial phase of both HP Quality Planningand HP Functional Testing Automation Service, we determine the high-level architecture and theimplementation approach. To begin test managementand functional test automation, our consultants assessthe relevant strategic, functional and technical aspectsof your organization. We also meet with the right teamof business and technical stakeholders to identifyexisting challenges, as well as assess the current stateof your organization’s testing environment and testingprocesses. Next, we use this information to recommendthe deployment of HP Quality Center, either throughHP Managed Software Solutions or as an in-houseimplementation. Our team works with you to formulatea comprehensive solution roadmap that details thehigh-level HP Quality Center architecture andimplementation strategy we will use.

ScopeDrawing on the information we gathered during theassess phase, our consultants help you select one ofyour most important applications to use as the pilot forthe implementation process. This allows you to see theimmediate value of our products. We also formulatehigh-level business objectives that define the success of the initial testing activity. Finally, we provide you with a proposal detailing the best HP solution and a written statement of work.

DesignDuring this phase, we hold a series of discoverymeetings to confirm any findings we made during theassessment phase and conduct a more in-depthanalysis of your existing organization, infrastructureand application environment. This includes systemarchitecture, infrastructure, data flows, users, enterprisenetwork, organizational structure and interactions, yourprocesses and workflows, existing testing tools, specificapplications and business process steps to be tested,and more. We combine this information with thebusiness requirements to form the requirementsspecification document. Our team then works to designa deployment strategy, an implementation strategy anda risk management strategy to achieve these objectives:

• Define the general framework for the project.

• Determine the most effective and efficient sizing ofthe HP Quality Center environment and technicalspecifications for deployment.

• Specify any required process modifications.

• Define an appropriate organizational structure tosupport HP Quality Center.

• Specify product training and mentoring plans.

• Fulfill quality, resource and timeline requirements.

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ImplementIn this phase, we implement our solutions, starting with the sizing and configuration of the hardware andsoftware platform on which HP Quality Center will run.This is followed by the installation of HP TestDirectorfor Quality Center software, HP QuickTest Professionalsoftware and HP Business Process Testing software inyour environment, including verifying the installation. If you have chosen to use HP Managed SoftwareSolutions, HP Quality Center is pre-deployed, whicheliminates the need for the installation step. If yourorganization is already using other quality products such as a requirements or defects management tool, werecommend the best approach for seamlessly integratingthese external applications into HP Quality Center.

Once we have installed and configured the HP QualityCenter environment and completed the classroomtraining on product operation, our HP team beginsworking with you on the processes defined in thestatement of work. We apply HP best practices to helpmeet your business objectives. HP Quality Planningmethodology uses a learn-by-doing approach, whichallows you to simultaneously customize HP bestpractices to your specific situation and quickly producevalue for your organization.

Most customers choose to deploy quality processes,using HP TestDirector for Quality Center, beforeautomating testing. We begin the pilot project byspecifying well-defined, measurable test requirementsfor the project that fulfill your most important businessobjectives.

Next, we identify which types of tests to perform basedon the previously defined requirements. Usingspecifications generated in the design phase, we helpyou develop your test plan, configure automatedfunctional tests and business process scripts, execute thetests, and report and track defects. The overall executionof the pilot project can include the following steps:

• Test requirements definition

• Test plan development

• Test case design

• Test data definition

• Test script development

• Test environment setup

• Test execution

• Results analysis

Because the testing process is complex, it is divided into a number of stages, each with a specific scope and objectives (described below):

• Business component testing tests each individualfeature or element and verifies that it functions asexpected.

• Business process testing takes all logically connectedbusiness components, links them to form an entirebusiness process, and tests whether critical businessprocesses within the application run correctly.

• Business integration testing involves two types of teststhat determine whether critical business processes runcorrectly within the application or an application andits interface.

– Business interface integration test

– Business process integration test

• System integration testing may include severalapplications and tests the system as a whole toenable each feature to coexist with the others andprevent new additions from adversely affecting oldfeatures or existing processes when tested as part of the entire system.

• Regression testing tests a system to verify that it stillfunctions as expected after a material change occursto the system, such as the addition or modification of a function, a change in hardware platform, ora major release of the operating system or othersystem software.

• User acceptance testing (also known as end-usertesting) tests whether the system meets the users’needs and inspires confidence in its usability.

During the implementation process, our team helps youcreate the appropriate test scripts that test the variousfunctions in an application. We also work with you todefine the defect-resolution process, including defectreporting and management.

The go-live decision process is integral to qualitymanagement. An integral aspect of quality managementinvolves the go-live decision process. The HP ManagedSoftware Solutions team will demonstrate how tooperate the dashboard within HP Quality Center. Thisallows you to create and customize reports and graphsthat give you a clear picture of the status of all aspectsof your testing projects and the applications under test.This information allows you to consider the risk ofmoving an application into production.

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It is also important that the HP Quality Centeradministrator properly maintains users and projects,applies software maintenance, and upgrades HP QualityCenter as soon as possible when new releases areavailable. We show you how the Site Administratorcomponent of HP Quality Center helps you managedata relevant to the testing process, users and database servers.

After the initial pilot project, we draft your customizedbest practices and provide them to you for review. Our goal is to enable you to confidently test additionalapplications in the future.

ValidateOnce implementation is complete, we work with you to conduct a retrospective review of the implementationof HP Quality Center, including the architecture, the pilottesting process, the self-sufficiency of your team and theprocesses created based on best practices. This allowsus to verify that you can successfully test and managethe quality of your delivered applications. If you needfurther clarification or additional assistance in anyarea, we can provide you with another tutorial toenable your team to be fully self-sufficient.

We verify that deployment was successfully completedusing a validation checklist. After confirming that wehave followed best practices and maintained complianceto the implementation framework, we document thetechnical outcomes of the implementation. The projectfinal report contains technical results, estimates ofachieved value realization and implementationdocumentation. It is accompanied by an executivesummary report detailing key performance indicators(KPIs) and recommendations for future improvements.We then identify the next major phase in the evolutionof your testing organization and processes based onHP Quality Center.

RealizeWe perform the realize phase throughout theimplementation. Again, each of the five phases has itsspecific set of indicators and goals against which wemeasure progress. You must track KPIs throughout thedeployment to efficiently achieve your implementationobjectives, track critical performance variables overtime and exercise effective test management. Duringeach phase, you realize the value of the products asthey improve test management and defect identification.You may also see the value through the expansion of the number of test assets and tested applications,increased effectiveness of automated scripts, evolutionof organizational change and the expanded usage ofHP Quality Center across your organization. Overall,the value of implementation is accelerated by applyingbest practices to increase the benefits of thedeployment and operation of the center.

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HP Quality Center best practices overviewThis section lists the quality areas improved using HP Quality Center. The HP Quality Center bestpractices follow the same outline. Topics in bold are detailed in the following subsection.

HP Quality Center best practices are divided into thefollowing groups:

• People describes best practices for organizing yourtesting team, interacting with other teams and trainingstaff to effectively manage your HP Quality Center.

• Process describes guidelines for processes enabledand automated by HP Quality Center, and processesrequired to manage and operate HP Quality Center.

• Product describes best practices for implementing HP Quality Center, including the initial implementationand ongoing support and maintenance.

A brief overview of the sub-processes is listed below:

People• The HP Quality Center organization

– Quality group personnel profiles and skill levels– Building the team– Roles and responsibilities– HP Quality Center team education program

Process• Test strategy creation

– Manual and automated testing approach

• Requirements management– Requirements gathering and definition processes– Requirements implementation in HP Quality Center

• Test plan development

• Risk assessment based on quality goals– Estimation work effort– Organizing the test plan

• Test design and execution strategy (by test type)– Business function/component test– Business process test– Business integration test– System integration test– Regression test– User acceptance test (UAT)

• Functional testing automation– Test automation approach– Automated script design and development – Script maintenance and overall test asset management

• System, environment and data management– Test environment management (including test system)– Test data management– Test data planning– Creating data– Maintaining data– Supplying and scrubbing data

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• Defect management– Defect lifecycle– Defect attributes and definitions– Defect analysis– Alignment with problem-management process

• Quality management and reporting– Determining KPIs – KPI tracking and analysis– Reporting

• HP Quality Center processes– Determining quality goals– Assessing the impact of HP Quality Center on

existing testing and development processes– Planning for change in communication– Making the transition– Implementing first iteration– Expanding operation to an entire department– Expanding to several lines of businesses (LOBs) – Creating elements of a shared services structure – Determining work request process and service-level

agreements (SLAs)– Assigning project management– Establishing charge-back models

Product• HP Quality Center infrastructure and setup

– Identifying requirements for infrastructure deployment

– Planning the architecture– Identifying the hardware/sizing considerations– Identifying the security environment– Optimizing setup– Creating setup sequence and time estimates– Deciding on scalability considerations for large

deployments

• HP Quality Center integrations

• HP Quality Center administration– Managing user groups and user-group permissions – Customizing module access– Customizing projects

— Customizing suggested fields— Customizing field models

– Defining, implementing and maintaining template project

– Initiating project– Archiving project

• HP Quality Center system maintenance– Administrator communication process and

feedback– Server management– Web and application server– Database server– File server– Version control– Backup administration and/or maintenance– Data archiving – Upgrades and patches– High-availability maintenance– Disaster recovery– Localization

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HP Quality Center best practices examplesThis section contains some excerpts of the bestpractices that we use in HP Quality Planning and HP Functional Testing Automation Service. Because this white paper is not intended to be a summary ofthe complete best practices, we have only listed onebest practice for each of the product, people andprocess areas. The examples in this section include:

• Quality group personnel profiles and skill levels

• Test data planning and creation

• Project customization

Quality group personnel profiles and skill levelsYou can adapt the flexible organizational designdetailed in Figure 2 to the size of your organizationand the resources available to enable successfuldeployment and operation of HP Quality Center.

Building the teamTo increase your resources and efficiently use availableskill sets, you must build a team of people to supportyour HP Quality Center deployment. Involving the rightpeople from the start will help expedite the planningand investigation stage. It will also help uncoverpotential implementation setbacks early in the process.

In Figure 3 are examples of the individual functions,required technical skill sets, prerequisite knowledgeand concrete responsibilities of the team members who will be involved in this process. A complete listmust contain specifications for all team members’ roles. Complete details on each of the positions areavailable during an HP Quality Center deployment.

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Product admin*(1 minimum)

Infrastructure admin

Service coordinator

Internal customer support

* Mandatory (minimum size of an initial organization — 5 persons)

Service delivery

Test automationengineers* (2 minimum)

Test environment manager

Data engineer

Test architect

Center manager*

Project management

Project manager*(1 minimum)

Support services

Figure 2. Recommended structure of the HP Quality Center team

Team members with the appropriate skill sets areselected based on the size and scope of your operationand new quality management processes. Users must beeducated in order for the implementation of HP QualityCenter to be successful. Although formal user trainingtakes only one day, we recommend that you provideyour team with additional on-the-job mentoring forapproximately one week. We also recommend thatyou provide them access to the HP Quality Centerchampion in case they have questions.

As part of the full HP Quality Center package, weinclude other information on organizational designsub-topics. For example, these include when best toexpand the team, the interface between the team andother IT and business groups, and how to transferknowledge to the individual development teams.

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Team member

Center manager

HP Quality Center administrator

Test automation engineer

Project manager

Requisite skills / Responsibilities / Ownership of key components

Skills: Software Quality Assurance (SQA) experience and understanding of HP Quality Center capabilities,implementation and operation processes, and in-depth knowledge of the graphs and reports module of HP Quality Center.

Responsibilities: Lead HP Quality Center implementation assessment; promote HP Quality Center within theorganization; confirm resource allocation. On the operations side, define test strategy and analyze HP QualityCenter data for test process management and release decisions.

Ownership: HP Quality Center process ownership; coordination with business, test and development organizations.

Skills: Expertise in HP Quality Center administration.

Responsibilities: Create and modify new projects, project groups, users and user privileges. Work with otherteams and vendors on HP Quality Center integrations with other products.

Ownership: Manage HP Quality Center projects initiation and archiving, customizations, and users.

Skills: Expertise in functional test automation.

Responsibilities: Assist in conversion of manual test plan to automated. Design automated test infrastructure andtest suite architecture. Develop, validate and execute automated tests. Analyze results if required.

Ownership: Development of automated testing environment, automated test suite design and knowledge transferto internal customers.

Skills: Experience in project management and SQA.

Responsibilities: Plan and manage projects delivered by the HP Quality Center team according to therequirements of the internal customers.

Ownership: Test project planning and management, SLA reporting and communication with internal customers.

Figure 3. HP Quality Center rolesand responsibilities

Test data planning and creationTest data management is an important part of thesystem, environment and test management process.We recommend that you form a team to develop a set of data deliverables to be completed at critical pointsin the project lifecycle. These deliverables enable you to plan and deliver the test data appropriately. In addition, you should hold data review sessions withall key team members to review deliverables and toprovide feedback.

The following section details some of the deliverablesand processes you should implement to providesufficient quality support.

Test data planningThe first point in the software development lifecycle that involves test data planning activities is duringcompletion of the design.

As the projects’ requirements or change requests arefinalized for each release of the projects, the test datamanagement team completes a release-level test dataplan. This document is created after release managementhas packaged the overall release. The test data plan andits milestones need to align with release management’stimelines and milestones for each release.

The test data plan should include input from allstakeholders. This allows the test data managementteam to coordinate and facilitate necessary data-related activities to aid in a successful release. Further,the test data plan should focus on the planning andlevel of effort required of the test data managementteam. Testing and development teams should workwith the test data management team to complete thetest data plan. The test data plan includes, but is notlimited to, information such as:

• Phases of testing to be supported

• Scope of release

• Test data management level of effort

• Logistics and milestones by project, test phase andenvironment

• Identification of resources and procedures for testdata creation

• Requirements for data refresh(es) and/or datarestoration(s)

Once you’ve created the test data plan document, thetest execution organization should review it forapproval.

Creating dataThe test data management team is responsible forproviding test data to the testing organization basedon the requirements approved in the test plan. The testdata management team provides the test data beforethe test execution phase.

The most efficient and effective way you can provideand manage the test data is to use formalized dataprocesses and tools. To enable success, the test datamanagement team implements numerous test datapreparation processes, such as data re-use, dataconsolidation, data restoration and data sharing.

The test data management team, with the supportingdatabase administrators and system administrators,can facilitate data creation in a number of differentways, depending on the unique requirements of thedata requested.

Using one technique, you may copy data fromproduction or other environments into the target testenvironment. You should use this method when datathat meets the requirements is found to exist withinother environments.

Using another technique, you can manually enter data,even though the actual entry may be done by anyorganization based on data input documents providedby the test data management team. You should use thismethod when data does not already exist in otherenvironments. You may also use it when manual entryis a feasible option given the volume of datarequested.

In addition, you may use data-generation tools such as the Usage Generator, restoring data located in the data repository, and modifying existing data in the environment to meet the new data needs. Althoughyou should create the test scripts, the test datamanagement team would provide the test data for the scripts.

If you need modification of existing scenarios beforeyou start testing, the test data management team wouldbe responsible for facilitating those changes from adata perspective. The execution team is responsible for any data modifications required as part of a test.

Additional information on the system, environmentand data management processes is included as part of a full HP Quality Center package.

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Project customizationWe are very flexible about customizing the product for your specific projects. You must plan customizationcarefully. With a greater number of available userfields, and the ability to add memo fields and createinput masks, you can customize your HP QualityCenter projects to capture any data required by yourtesting process.

The HP Quality Center administrator should customizeprojects to meet the specific needs of your testingteam. This includes adding and customizing fields, andcreating categories and lists that reflect the needs of aspecific testing project and suit your project’s uniquequality objectives, standards and testing approach.The administrator can modify the behavior of HPQuality Center fields by:

• Restricting users to selecting only values fromassociated lists

• Making an entry in certain fields mandatory

• Preserving a history of values entered in a specificfield

• Including data unique to your project by creatinguser fields

• Associating these fields with HP Quality Center anduser-defined lists

You can customize and add fields that may be criticalto collecting relevant quality metrics. The data qualityincreases as the drop-down lists and automatic fill-insare used. You identify the information required forevaluating application readiness and progress of thetesting, development and other relevant IT processes.Properly customizing HP Quality Center helps tomanage multi-application testing efforts.

Suggested field customizationsThe suggested field customization options listed belowrelate to the major IT processes supported or impactedby HP Quality Center.

• Requirements management: You can differentiatevarious types of requirements by creating customfields. These fields can indicate whether a specificrequirement relates to sizing, system, performance,business process priority, business criticality andmore. You must express considerations such as thecost of a requirement change with a custom field.

• Change management: You can track and managechange requests on requirements with custom fieldsindicating the current status of the request(new/pending/canceled). You can also use anothercustom field to track the number of design changesrequested after the release process.

• Configuration management: You can use customfields to monitor the number of configuration errorsdetected for each module in the test plan tree.

• Application development: For more completeinformation regarding costs and resources, you maycreate custom fields that estimate the developmenttime for tests and the deviation from expected andactual development times.

• Quality assurance: To track weighted defect metricsspecific to the testing project, you can create customfields for easy reference.

• Manage releases: You can create custom fields totrack the versions before each release, or in somecases the version number in which certain defects orenhancements will be implemented.

• Production management: You can help detectperformance and availability problems by trackingresponse time with custom fields.

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• Problem reporting and management: You canmonitor problems that arise after tuning or upgradingby creating custom fields that indicate the number of problems, their causes and the cost of fixing. Thecost field could be visible to a select set of projectplanners and managers or quality assurance analysts.

Field customization modelsYou may use the defect entity field examples below asa guideline for how to name and define the function ofeach option in a customized field.

• Defect type provides a drop-down list of values thatcan be used for defect analysis.

– Configuration: Select this type when the defectis due to a problem in the configuration of the application, application server or database server.

– Data: Select this type when the defect is data-related,such as incorrect values for a particular region.

– Process: Select this type when the process does notmatch the system.

– System: Select this type when the problem can be identified with an application area.

• Impact provides a drop-down list of the followingvalues to track impact:

– No: The defect does not impact any aspect of reporting.

– Potential: It may have an impact and needs to be investigated further.

– Yes: It has a definite impact, such as change in field size, change of record name, etc.

• Impact severity shows the impact on the testing effort.

– Showstopper/critical: The defect results in the failure of the complete software system, a subsystemor a software unit within the system. Testing cannot continue until the defect is resolved.

– Major: The defect results in the failure of the complete software system, of a sub-system or of a software unit within the system. There is no way to make use of the failed component(s); however, there are acceptable processing alternatives that yield the desired results. Although the online testingprocesses would be halted, testing in reporting, for example, would be able to continue.

– Average: The defect does not result in a failure but causes the system to produce incorrect, incomplete or inconsistent results, or the defect impairs system usability. Testing will continue contingent on completing an analysis of the scripts to determine if there is value in executing them.

– Minor: The defect does not cause a failure, does not impair usability and the desired processing results are easily obtained by working around the defect.

– Low: The defect is the result of non-conformance to a standard, is related to the aesthetics of the system, or is a request for an enhancement. Defectsat this level may be deferred or even ignored.

• Resolution priority provides insight for thedevelopment team as to how soon the defect needsto be corrected.

– Resolve immediately: Further testing and/or operation cannot be performed until the defect has been repaired. The system cannot be used until the repair has been made.

– Normal queue: The defect should be repaired during the normal course of development activities. It can wait until a new build or version is created.

– Low priority: The defect is an irritant that should be repaired but can wait until after more serious defects have been fixed.

– Defer: The defect repair can be put off indefinitely. It can be resolved in a future major system revision or not resolved at all.

• Testing region refers to the geographic area wherethe tester is located. For example, if you are testingfrom the UK, then when you enter the defect, thecorrect value would be UK.

• Test type enables you to enter the test classification ofthe testing being executed, such as system, functionalor load.

• Service management enables you to create customfields to report on the number and severity ofproblems related to SLA non-compliance.

We provide you with complete information on allaspects of HP Quality Center with the fullimplementation of HP Quality Center.

ConclusionDeploying any software across an organization can be a complex process. Although HP Quality Centertechnology is easy to use, your team will need theknowledge and training to implement the software in a reasonable time frame. We have gatheredextensive knowledge and expertise during thousandsof customer implementations—which we use to helpyou implement HP Quality Center.

HP Quality Center best practices are structured policies and procedures that guide you through theimplementation of HP Quality Center and help you use HP product centers and business technologyoptimization (BTO) processes. These best practicesprovide you with an incremental and iterative roadmapfor achieving fast results using HP Quality Center tomeet your organization’s goals.

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To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/software© Copyright 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject tochange without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warrantystatements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting anadditional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

4AA1-3912ENW, July 2007