How does your tool improve my life as someone in QA?
Xray works natively inside Jira, therefore it promotes collaboration and transparency between testers, developers, business analysts and all stakeholders of the project. In the QA role, you are no longer siloed to a different tool - you work right alongside developers in Jira, within the project itself. You can take advantage of the Jira agile boards with enhancements from Xray which allows you to follow the progress of testing and see which test cases are linked to requirements. This way developers can also provide feedback on test cases and contribute to Quality. The results of testing are promptly seen on the deliverables (e.g., user stories); there is no need to synchronize anything. All information is synched in one place - Jira - that acts as the single source of truth. With Xray, you’re also able to choose the kind of testing you want to do, either manual, automated or exploratory, and you have a vast collection of the most popular and demanded test automation tools and frameworks to choose from and integrate with. Use the Xray REST API to integrate with tools like Cucumber, Jenkins, JUnit, NUnit, and Robot Framework to name a few, and make automation a part of your test suite. With Xray you can decide how to test and manage your entire testing process, from the planning and organization, to the execution and reports.
What misconceptions are there around your tool?
There’s an old one: Test Sets vs Test Plans. We have written an article to clarify that: Test Sets vs Test Plans. Test Sets appeared first in the product and then Test Plans. In test tools, we can see some concepts being named differently and sometimes a given name is used for quite different purposes.
What tool feature are you most proud of?
Flexibility. Flexibility when using Xray is not built into a specific feature; it’s a part of the Xray design. Flexibility allows teams to use the tool the way they want or need and even to extend it, if required. Teams are unique, and having a tool does not mandate a strict process is essential to leverage the best use out of the tool. Therefore, teams can decide how to use Xray and to what extent.
What is your roadmap and how do you decide what to prioritize?
The roadmap for Xray Cloud is public: https://docs.getxray.app/display/XRAYCLOUD/Roadmap Customers can vote on suggestions as soon as they are created. We then use that information along with internal research and our own strategy to make them broader and more impactful. Only a subset of these suggestions are delivered though, accordingly with the depicted benefits, risks, while at the same time making sure we have product consistency. Our customers come from the most diverse backgrounds, from finance and high-tech, to the medical and transportation industries, so they each have unique needs that we try to facilitate.
How do you involve your customers in your tool development process?
Customers are invited to contribute with suggestions that we integrate into our backlog. Most of Xray features came as a result of customer interaction and active listening. Feedback is collected on multiple occasions, and not just by regular support channels but also from events, customer calls, and monitoring of the community.
How do you test your own tool?
We use Jira to manage our projects and, of course, Xray for tracking our testing. As the expression goes, we “eat our own dog food, since day 1.” We use a mix of testing approaches: manual scripted test cases, test automation scripts, and exploratory testing. All results are tracked in our Jira project, no matter the testing approach or the test types we are referring to. We also link tests to Story issues, so that we can see the impact of our testing directly on these issues and on the Agile board. Most of our test automation scripts are at the unit level and then less and less at higher levels. We also have automated performance testing to keep track of any improvements or regressions related to performance.
What is the most under-appreciated feature of your tool?
Perhaps documentation may be the most under-appreciated feature. It’s part of the product but it’s stored on the web. Xray has an extensive documentation about every feature, process, and integration related to the tool. The customers that do read our documentation really love it, however many may not be completely aware of how vast our knowledge base is. As an example, we have a specific section called Tutorials, Tips, and Tricks that has dozens of test automation tutorials, as well as process related recommendations. We are always improving our documentation and consistently adding to it, but having such a vast documentation database can also be a challenge in terms of finding information so we’re also working on making it easier to navigate and find exactly what you’re looking for.
How do you support your customers when releasing tool updates?
Xray for Jira Cloud is updated frequently; we actively monitor it and deploy updates on low traffic hours; if a small downtime is required, we notify in advance. Xray for Jira Data Center has also frequent updates, however these are only installed when and if customers decide to do so. Ultimately this means there are customers using different versions of the product and upgrading from/to many different versions. We have internal environments to easily check any potential problems and replicate any unexpected behaviour. If a major problem is found, usually a fix is implemented ASAP. A preliminary hotfix may be delivered. This happens in a collaborative process with our customers. Some of them contact us in advance and usually we provide some guidance. We also have optional support packages with more aggressive SLA and other perks that are tailored to meet the needs of customers with even higher expectations.
What type of support is given when purchasing your tool?
We provide a free Xray trial to anyone who’s interested in exploring our app. You can sign-up for a free trial on our website or directly from the Atlassian Marketplace. You can also explore the app in our sandbox and watch our series of walkthroughs and tutorials to familiarize yourself with Xray’s key features and benefits. For any additional information, doubts, demo or quote requests, any company can contact us through our website. We also provide extensive documentation and free courses on the Xray Academy for customers looking to learn more about Xray. Xray for Jira Data Center and Xray for Jira Cloud licenses are provided on a subscription model while Xray for Jira Server licenses are perpetual with the possibility of purchasing additional support and upgrades on an annual basis. Active licenses also entitle you to access our award winning support. Note that Trial licenses also include access to our support team. In addition, we have optional services such as Priority Onboarding where we assist the customer in setting up Xray for optimal use and we also have optional tech support packages that have even more aggressive SLAs if your company so requires.
How would you like to keep the conversation going with the Ministry of Testing community in the long term?
We are a tool vendor but more than that, we aim to make teams successful in delivering value and putting the focus on Quality. The power is not in the tool itself, but in how the team uses it. Tools exist to help out and not block the potential of the team. We aim to empower teams with a tool that promotes collaboration, transparency and visibility, so that everyone can become an active contributor to the quality of the software that they deliver. We are here to help the community become successful no matter which testing approach they choose (test cases, test automation, exploratory testing). Beyond contributing to the community with our tools for test management and exploratory testing, we aim to contribute to the overall evolution and success of software development. We’ve been seeing a real shift in the industry, moving away from a testing-centric culture to a quality-centric one and we see this as a very positive change that ultimately creates better, higher-quality software with more value for the people that use it. People in the QA industry, many of whom are a part of the Ministry of Testing community, are the real voices of this positive change, and we want to continue to support, share and amplify their voices and together build a better future for the software development industry.
