Rational Quality Manager is based on the Jazz™ platform (http://jazz.net and http://www.ibm.com/software/rational/jazz/) and inherits many characteristics from that platform. Rational Quality Manager is designed to be used by test teams of all sizes and supports a variety of user roles, such as test manager, test architect, test lead, tester, and lab manager. The application also supports roles outside the test organization.
For role-based guidance on what you can do to get started with Rational Quality Manager, see Getting started with quality management.
A test plan that you define in Rational Quality Manager drives activity for distributed teams through all phases of the project lifecycle. The test plan defines the objectives and scope for the test effort and contains criteria to help teams determine the answer to this question: "Are we ready to release?"
You can use the test case design and construction features to define the overall design for each test case. Each test case includes a rich text editor where you can include background information about the test case. A test case can also include links to development items and requirements. You can associate a test case with other test artifacts, such as test plans, test scripts, and test case execution records. In additions, test cases can be combined into test suites.
Rational Quality Manager provides a full-featured manual test editor. You can also import existing manual test scripts from Rational Manual Tester. You can add reuse and automation capabilities to your manual tests by using keywords.
With Rational Quality Manager, you can manage and execute test scripts that were created with tools such as IBM Rational Functional Tester, IBM Rational Performance Tester, Rational Robot, Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality, and IBM Rational AppScan® Tester Edition.
You can also import test artifacts from external test management solutions, such as Rational ClearQuest Test Manager and Rational TestManager.
Rational Quality Manager includes an integrated test execution environment for running tests developed within the product as well as running tests created in other manual, functional, performance, and security testing tools. Options for test execution include running a test case directly, grouping test cases into test suites for parallel or sequential execution, or creating test case and test-suite execution records to map test environment information directly to the test cases and test suites.
Rational Quality Manager includes a set of predefined reports to help you get status on your project. You can also install the optional Rational Reporting for Development Intelligence component or Rational Insight for additional reports and the ability to customize reports to suit your particular business needs.
In addition, you can see live, test execution status just by opening a test plan or by browsing a list of test plans and opening the execution view. You can trace the relationship between test artifacts, requirements, and development artifacts by browsing a list of certain test artifacts and opening the traceability view.
Rational Quality Manager makes it easy to share information with other members of your team. In the Jazz-based work item system, team members can assign tasks and defects to each other and view everyone's status. Test plan authors and test case designers can distribute their work for review and track the status of each reviewer. The team can see new and changed requirements. The team can also view the test cases that are needed to satisfy those requirements. Team members can see who is logged on and what they are working on. Team members can be notified automatically of changes, inputs, and iterations that impact their work.
Furthermore, authors of test plans, test cases, and test scripts can place a lock on their artifacts to prevent others from editing them.
With the lab management capabilities that Rational Quality Manager provides, you can create requests for the test environments that you specify in your test plan. You can then work with the lab manager to ensure that lab resources and test environments are available when needed. Lab managers can track all lab resources from a centralized resource repository and service requests from the test team.
Rational Quality Manager helps IT and security professionals protect against the threat of attacks and data breaches through its integration with Rational AppScan Tester Edition. Security testing for your web applications can result in higher-quality, more secure applications at a reasonable cost.
Rational Quality Manager helps ensure that your business processes comply with industry, corporate, and departmental standards and regulations. Throughout the testing lifecycle, Rational Quality Manager provides the tools to obtain an up-to-the-minute measurement of software quality and project metrics. With its comprehensive test plan and integration with requirements management and defect tracking tools, Rational Quality Manager helps streamline your test strategy and produce reliable records of test results and project history that can be used for auditing purposes.