Combining Manual and Automated Test Scripts in Engineering Test Management

 Overview

You probably already know that in IBM Engineering Test Management (ETM) you can create: 

  • Manual test scripts - where the tester manually walks through a set of steps, and
  • Automated test scripts - Where the test invokes some external testing tool that executes and then returns a result and (optionally) files / URLs

But did you know that you can combine them by using Keywords ? 

Keywords

Despite the rather odd name, Keywords are a way of re-using test scripts. 

A Keyword has a related test script - which can be manual or automated. Keywords can then be inserted as a step into any other test script, effectively re-using the test script associated with that Keyword. We can even see where Keywords (and their associated test scripts) have been used: 


This Keyword for example, is associated with a test script that uses the command line to invoke an external test (in this case its a simple batch file)


We can insert that Keyword as a step inside a manual test script, like this:


Executing a Combined Test

When executing a test like the one above, ETM waits for the tester to input the results when manual steps are encountered. Whenever a step is encountered that is an automated test - that test is automatically invoked (and its results stored) and then the next step is executed, which could again be either a manual or automatic test. 

Here, for example, is a test result where the first step was a manual one - 'Tested By' the IBM user and the second step was an automated test, 'Executed By' the IBM user:





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