HP Quality Center - Defect/Bug Tracking

Introduction:

• HP quality center is web-based test management tool
• QC is used to manage the application testing process
• QC is used to define releases, specifying requirements, planning tests, executing tests, tracking defects, alerting on changes, and analyzing results
• QC also shows you how to customize your project
• Defect: Anything that is extra or missing or wrong in application
  
  is termed as defect
• QC helps you to add defects to application when found and track the defect repair progression.
• QC provides a central defect tracking system that can be used by testing and development teams to resolve defects QC testing process includes 5 phases:
• Specifying release
• Specifying requirements
• Planning Tests
• Running Tests
• Tracking Defects Defect Modules:
• QC Defect module provides complete system for logging, tracking, managing, and analyzing application defects
• QC Defect tracking tools are organized into: Defects grid, Grid filter, Description, Attachments, History Defect Logging: Steps to Log a defect
• In Defect module, click New Defect
• New defect dialog box contains data fields and multiple tabbed pages. This multiple tabbed pages are custom-defined by QC administrator for your project
• You can also add attachments to provide more information about the defect. QC supports five types of attachments
• Click Submit to save the defect to your project database Defect Organizing - Grid filter provides two ways to organize defect grid:
• Use entry boxes under each field heading in grid filter to select the criteria for filtering the data in the defects grid
• Use the Filter dialog box to set a filter condition
• To clear filter criteria, click the Clear Filter/Sort button Defect Status:
• New: Default status when defect is reported
• Open: Indicates defect is assigned to review
• Reopen: Indicates testing team reopened the defect which was closed
• Fixed: Indicates defect is verified
• Closed: Defect is closed and waiting fro approval by tester
• Rejected: Defect is rejected , rationale fore rejecting defect to be provided Defect association with other entities - Defects can be associated with the following entities:
• Requirement
• Test
• Test set
• Test instance
• Test run
• Test steps
• Other Defect This linkage of defects with entities enables to
• Trace your defects from perspective of QC entities
• Search defects that are related to specific QC entities
• Link multiple entities of same type to the same defect Defect Requirement:
• Associating defects with test requirements will help to ensure consistency throughout the testing process
• The defect-requirement association enables us to utilize the status of defects to determine whether requirements have been met
• A requirement can be associated with more than one defect
• Either a existing defect can be associated with the requirement or new defect can be added to requirement Defect Test:
• Association of defect with test helps to ensure defect traceability throughout the testing process. A defect may be indirectly linked to a test through other entities, such as a test instance, a test run, or a test step
• Tests from Test plan module can be associated with defects that have been logged in the Defects module Defect Matching:
• Matching defects enables you to eliminate similar and duplicate defects in your project
• Each time you add a new defect, Quality Center stores lists of keywords from the Summary and Description fields
• When you search for similar defects, keywords in these fields are matched against other defects
• Note that keywords must be more than two characters and letter case does not affect your results Updating the defects:
• A defect can be regularly updated to record all the information about an issue.
• A defect can be regularly updated to record decisions made as different individuals review the defect.
• While updating the defect ,click Details to update specific data fields.
• Click Attachments to attach files to defect.
• Click Linked entities and then click the Defects tab to link a defect to another defect.
• Click Others tab to link a defect to other entities such as a test or test set.
• Click History to view the changes made to defect. Favorite view: A favorite view is a view of a Quality Center window with the settings you applied to it. Steps to create favorite view in defects grid:
• Defect module should be displayed
• Define a filter to view defects, Click the Set Filter/Sort button. The Filter dialog box opens.
• Click the Filter Condition box, Click the browse button. The Select Filter Condition dialog box opens. Click OK to close the Select Filter Condition dialog box. Click OK to apply your chosen filter.
• Add a favorite view. In the Favorites menu, choose Add to Favorites. The Add Favorite dialog box opens.

Quality assurance activitiy

Quality assurance covers all the activities including design, development, production, installation, servicing and documentation. The introduction of the rules: "fit for purpose" and "do it right the first time". It includes the guideline of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production, and review processes.

One of the commonly used prototypes for QA management is the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) approach.

Plan–Do–Check–Act Cycle

The concept of the PDCA Cycle was originally developed by Walter Shewhart, the pioneering statistician who developed statistical process control in the Bell Laboratories in the US during the 1930's. It is often referred to as `the Shewhart Cycle'. It was taken up and promoted very effectively from the 1950s on by the famous Quality Management authority, W. Edwards Deming, and is consequently known by many as `the Deming Wheel'.

Description

The plan–do–check–act cycle (Figure 1) is a four-step model for carrying out change. It is just as a circle that has no end, the PDCA cycle should be repeated again and again for continuous improvement. Use the PDCA Cycle to coordinate your continuous improvement efforts. It both emphasizes and demonstrates that improvement programs must start with careful planning, must result in effective action, and must move on again to careful planning in a continuous cycle.

Figure 1: Plan-do-check-act cycle

When Plan-Do-Check-Act come into play?

It is a model of continuous improvement.

When the starting of a new improvement project.

When developing a new or improved design of a process, product or service.

When defining a repetitive work process.

When planning data collection and analysis in order to verify and prioritize problems or root causes.

When implementing any change.

Plan-Do-Check-Act Procedure

Plan. Recognize an opportunity and plan a change. Plan to improve your operations first by finding out what things are going wrong (that is identify the problems faced), and come up with ideas for solving these problems.

Do. Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study. Do changes designed to solve the problems on a small or experimental scale first. This minimises disruption to routine activity while testing whether the changes will work or not.

Study. Review the test, analyze the results and identify what you’ve learned. Check whether the small scale or experimental changes are achieving the desired result or not. Also, continuously Check nominated key activities (regardless of any experimentation going on) to ensure that you know what the quality of the output is at all times to identify any new problems when they crop up.

Act. Take action based on what you learned in the study step: If the change did not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. Act to implement changes on a larger scale if the experiment is successful. This means making the changes a routine part of your activity.

. The diagram below lists the tools and techniques which can be used to complete each stage of the PDCA Cycle.

About 8051

The base of the embbeded system is Intel microcontroller 4004 which is nibble based. The development becomes quicker after the invention of the microcontroller of 8051 by Intel.
The Intel 8051 is Harvard architecture, single chip microcontroller (µC) which was developed by Intel in 1980 for use in embedded systems. Today 8051-compatible devices manufactured by more than 20 independent manufacturers viz: Atmel, Infineon Technologies (formerly Siemens AG), Maxim Integrated Products (via its Dallas Semiconductor subsidiary), NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductor), Winbond, ST Microelectronics, Silicon Laboratories (formerly Cygnal), Texas Instruments ,Cypress Semiconductor.
Intel's original 8051 family was developed using NMOS technology, but later versions used CMOS technology and were less power-hungry than their NMOS predecessors.

The microcontroller contains mainly CPU, RAM, ROM, I/O, interrupt logic, timer, etc.
8-bit data bus
16-bit address bus
On-chip RAM - 128 bytes ("Data Memory")
On-chip ROM - 4 kB ("Program Memory")
Four byte bi-directional input/output port
UART (serial port)
Two 16-bit Counter/timers
Two-level interrupt priority
Power saving mode
A particularly useful feature of the 8051 core is the inclusion of a Boolean processing engine which allows bit-level Boolean logic operations to be carried out directly and efficiently on internal registers and RAM.

The 8051 UART can be configured to use a 9th data bit that can provide addressable communications in an RS-485 multi-point communications environment.

8051 based microcontrollers typically include one or two UARTs, two or three timers, 128 or 256 bytes of internal data RAM (16 bytes of which are bit-addressable), up to 128 bytes of I/O, 512 bytes to 64 kB of internal program memory, and sometimes a quantity of extended data RAM (ERAM) located in the external data space. The original 8051 core ran at 12 clock cycles per machine cycle, with most instructions executing in one or two machine cycles. With a 12 MHz clock frequency, the 8051 could thus execute 1 million one-cycle instructions per second or 500,000 two-cycle instructions per second. Enhanced 8051 cores are now commonly used which run at six, four, two, or even one clock per machine cycle, and have clock frequencies of up to 100 MHz, and are thus capable of an even greater number of instructions per second.

Common features included in modern 8051 based microcontrollers include built-in reset timers with brown-out detection, on-chip oscillators, self-programmable Flash ROM program memory, boot loader code in ROM, EEPROM non-volatile data storage, I²C, SPI, and USB host interfaces, PWM generators, analog comparators, A/D and D/A converters, RTCs, extra counters and timers, in-circuit debugging facilities, more interrupt sources, and extra power saving modes

Embedded Testing

Technology has done much to make life easier for the billions of people living on the planet, not the least of which is make it possible to create enough food in order to sustain all of the people. However, technology is at its most positive when it is developed with all of the factors carefully considered and accounted for, and the only way to do that in a complete way is through the process of product testing.

Product testing allows for technology to be evaluated in laboratories long before it hits the shelves for the consumer to buy, and it ensures that anything that might be wrong with the technology is corrected well before it has the chance to do any damage to an individual person.
Embedded Testing is a company that takes the tried and true process of testing technology and applies it to the realm of embedded technology.
Embedded technology is some of the most innovative technology that has ever been created. It is also technology that has the ability to revolutionize sectors of the industry in ways that were previously never thought possible. Because of the heavy amount of promise and potential that has been placed on embedded technology however, a disappointment could be shattering for many that have tied their financial livelihoods to development along this path.
For this reason, product testing becomes far more important than it would be in a regular case. Ensuring that the embedded technology works exactly as it should is a priority for most companies, regardless of whether that technology happens to be software or hardware in form. There are many companies around that can help with the testing of embedded systems and technology, and Embedded Testing is one of the best.
Product testing is not a simple hit or miss process to see whether a particular piece of technology works. Rather, it is a complicated process of completely analysing a particular piece of technology in order to make sure that everything about the technology works in practice just as it did on a drawing board.

For that reason, knowledgeable experts in theory with experience in practical applications are needed in order for the testing to be done right. These are the only employees that work at Embedded Testing, ensuring that the company consistently delivers service that is of a very high quality, and with us, that high quality comes at a very reasonable price.