Zephyr

Zephyr as applied to Agile

See also: Waterfall, V-Model, Hybrid

Zephyr easily fits and enhances any test methodology that you might be using as part of your software development lifecycle: Waterfall, Agile, V-Model or a Hybrid.

Zephyr is organized into multiple, logical areas - Department, Projects, Releases/Iterations - and has applications in each area that allow for the rigidity of a process flow while keeping the overall model flexible to accommodate changes. This approach leads to effective management of every aspect of your testing department, while giving enhanced productivity and efficiency gains to all members of the department in their day-to-day activities.

The Agile approach to software development has the following salient aspects to it:

• It boasts an adaptive, fast process
• Consists of multiple iterations (1-4 weeks) with each iteration being a software project in itself, producing fully functional software components
• Continuous communication, re-usability and a final release

Zephyr is contextual based on the organization of projects and the iterations that it contains. A loose process can be applied and all test cases, documents, schedules, execution, reports, metrics and dashboards are kept contextual to a particular iteration as part of a larger release and accessed appropriately.

How Zephyr integrates with this process

For departments employing Agile, Zephyr is set up to have multiple iterations within each release. Stories are set up in each Iteration via the Repository Setup and any additional documentation is uploaded or linked via the Documents application. The ability to write quick mini test cases within Testcase Creation, copy/move/link throughout the iteration, and leverage previous iterations makes it very convenient to work when there isn't much time to write detailed testcases.

Execution Scheduling and Testcase Execution are applications that may or may not be used based on the length of each iteration and whether test execution is structured or ad-hoc/exploratory. Defect Tracking can be employed more as a place to track open issues/defects that are falling out of the immediate find-fix cycle.

The Collaboration application is leveraged very heavily in this model as it ties all the testers together making information sharing and instant communication very easy.