Author/Zhang Yueqing

In the whole software development life cycle, how to high-quality delivery, how to improve the stability of the software, testing is an essential link, only after fully tested software, in user experience, product performance and other aspects can have a better guarantee.

However, it is not easy to achieve a full test of a product and the process of test management, which often face a lot of questions, such as: how to do the test, how to test more reasonable, testing can be automated, how to reduce the burden of testers, testing work to do quantitative and how to improve the level of testing……..

From the early stage of using Excel and Word to manage test cases in the primary testing stage, to now develop into a test management software to improve the quality of the whole research and development process of the advanced stage, in order to solve the past in the testing of various pain points, a series of test management software was born. Examples include Jira, Zen Tao, PingCode, etc.

The value of instrumentalization is obvious in solving problems in the process of test management, whether it is process management, test case reuse, automation or collaboration between people. ** But with so many test management tools on the market, which one is better? It is difficult for us to know one by one, which requires a lot of time to research, and then choose a suitable test management software.

In the process of team selection, it is wise to choose several products with a large number of users and good reputation for comparison, such as jIRA abroad and PingCode in China.

Jira is no stranger to everyone. It is a commercial software designed by Atlassion that integrates project management, test management, defect tracking and so on. In the early stage of domestic software development, it is still at a low level, and Jira is the pioneer of domestic project management tools, conquering a large number of domestic users.

However, in recent years, there has been a rise of domestic tools, no matter PingCode or others, which are as good as Jira. ** And Jira’s new policy last year also meant a de facto ban on sales in China to some extent: **Atlassion will stop selling Server version (local privatized deployment version) of its Jira, Confluence and other products on February 2, 2021, and more than 90% of its customers in China are using Server version. (For more on the policy, please refer to this article: Where should Jira companies go? – Billion answers -)

PingCode is another masterpiece of Worktile, a well-known project and goal management tool in China. Although it was just released in recent years, PingCode has great strength both in terms of theoretical basis of product construction concept and functional polishing.

As a very popular R & D test management tool at home and abroad, Jira is still of great reference value in the process of tool selection, although they have changed their policies in China. So here, we take Jira as a reference to compare with domestic test management tools.

PingCode VS Jira

1. Function Comparison:

Through comparison, we can find that PingCode is not supported in test automation, but the comprehensive function of the whole product is far better than that of Jira, and PingCode automatic test function is said to be under development.

2. Operating experience

A friend who has used Jira once joked: “I remember that I used Jira plug-in to build a test management system for the company, and it took me a week to fully understand…… “So the operational experience part is an essential part of the experience;

The test management of PingCode is very easy to get started and professional. All kinds of twists and turns of Jira during initial construction do not exist in PingCode, because the test management system of PingCode is not based on plug-ins, but one of the sub-products developed by ourselves. This brings the author a great comfort, simple and professional.

3. Product price

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the high price of Jira, and PingCode supports free use for less than 25 people. From this point of view, it is very user-friendly.

After looking at the comparison of the functions of the two products, we can come to the conclusion that after the rapid development of the domestic test management tools in recent years, they are as strong as the famous foreign tools.

PingCode website

After a brief comparison, let’s take a look at the starting experience of PingCode:

PingCode hands-on experience

1, test management process overview

Before getting into the details, let me draw the main flow chart of a structured test of PingCode’s product:

Centering on the test library, the unified maintenance of test cases in the test library, through the creation of a test plan, and then the need to test cases, planning into the test plan, and then execute the planned use cases, and the test defects submitted to the Agile project.

Test plans can be associated with Agile projects, iterations, test cases can be associated with Agile user stories (requirements), and execution cases can be associated with Agile defects. All associations are two-way. On Agile projects you can see your test results clearly. It must be integrated into your project, and testing is always in the service of project quality.

2. Functional performance

Next, I will take a detailed look at how PingCode’s test management software is used:

  • Support the creation of use case library, convenient reuse of test cases, improve work efficiency: Use case library is used to store all use cases, unified management of use cases, can also be classified according to different projects management; Some common use cases can also be shared with everyone by creating a common use case library, thus reducing the workload of repeated maintenance of use cases

  • Can support creating test cases, detailed record case information, such as head, you can according to the test by the function point to establish the corresponding test cases, writing a use case steps, set the level of use cases, maintenance person, the type of use cases, notes, etc., use case steps to support copy, cases to support continuous creation at the same time, the function point, very cool

  • Import test cases: Support Excel and brain map import, brain map import this function is great

  • ** Use case list maintenance, support batch maintenance: ** When you create a lot of use cases, you need a maintenance page, in this interface, you can batch set maintenance person, delete use cases, use cases to move, copy to other use case library, but also support a variety of conditions to search, the function is very comprehensive

  • ** Support use case and user story association: ** Test case and user story association, which means that your use case is testing the user story scenario, and it is easy to see the associated user story information, status, etc

  • * * to support the new use case review, meet the demand of different teams: * * in some scenarios, a tester to finish the test cases, is not immediately in accordance with the written use cases to test, there may be a review of the link, all through the review, common to carding specification and completeness of these test cases, improve the ability of the test

  • ** Review results display: ** This interface is to display the use cases that have been reviewed and approved by all

  • * * support test plan, can very good planning team the following work: * * cases to maintain good, after we can complete a functional test by test plan, that is to say, you want to test the function, through a test plan to test the function of the corresponding use case planning, the establishment of test plans, depending on the process of each team.

  • ** Execute use cases: ** After we plan the test cases according to the test plan, we will test the function one by one. Whether the actual value of the test process is in line with the expected value of the use case, whether the function is defective, whether the test is passed and so on

  • Support cases associated with defect, complete traceability cases associated projects: if you found defects in the process of test, you can instantly create a use case in the implementation of the defects, and submitted to the defects in the system, at the same time, the defect and the test, can be traced, developers bug fixing, testers can also be further review test.

  • Support custom configuration of use cases to meet the personalized needs of the team: This feature is very powerful, users can define their own test cases for any scenario, support customization

  • Templates for creating use cases help save a lot of use case writing time: For testers, some test cases to test steps are largely the same, but there are some subtle differences, so that users to write after a test case, you can keep it said module, in the writing of other use cases directly using the template, and then, a change is very save time, improve the test efficiency

  • ** Output a complete test report for the Leader’s overall management: ** For a test team Leader, he may be more concerned about the overall report of a test plan, test coverage, defect statistics and how many use cases each tester tested.

To sum up, the gap between domestic tools and foreign tools is not as big as the previous impression in terms of functions and experience in test management. At least from the current comparison, we can conclude that PingCode is not inferior to Jira at all.

Of course, whether for JIRA or PingCode, test management knowledge is a part of its product capabilities. Both of them are products that can achieve r&d lifecycle management, and there are more things worth comparing;

Finally: PingCode website