Upgrading to Microsoft Test Manager 2013 (MTM)

It’s surprisingly hard to find what you will gain by upgrading to a new version of Microsoft Test Manager.

In this blog post we’ll cover MTM 2013. You can find MTM 2012 here

I’ve managed to track down some blog posts and received a few links from Microsoft. Below is a summary of what I’ve found. Please get in touch if you have any additional info you found interesting / driving in your upgrade adventure.

Note: Richard Fennell has some upgrade tips here.

MTM 2013 RTM

• View step attachments inline during execution, Add attachments and Pause/Resume tests in Web
• Inline editing for tests during execution in Web
• Test Plan Creation, Test Suite Mgmt, Parameter editing from Web
• Transition to MTM from Web
• Launching Test Runner from Web and pasting images into work item forms
• Bulk entry/edit of test cases using the grid view in Web

MTM 2013.2

• Column options for the test case grid view in Web
• Exporting test artifacts in Web
• Shared Parameters for Test Cases in Web

Here’s what I pulled from the KB Article

• Provides to testers and test leads the ability to export test artifacts so that these can be sent by email or as printouts and shared with stakeholders who do not have access to TFS.
• Provides to testers and test leads the ability to manage test parameter data at one place by using Shared Parameters. Any subsequent changes to parameter data can be updated at one place and all the test cases that reference the Shared Parameter are automatically updated.
• You can view default set of performance counters from your application under test during Cloud Load testing by using Application Insights service.

MTM 2013.3

• Test Plan and Test Suite Customization with TFS2013 Update3

Here’s what I pulled from the KB Article

• You can add custom fields and custom work flows for test plans and test suites.
• You can use Manage Test Suites permission for granting access to test suites.
• You can track changes to test plans and test suites by using work item history.
  For more information about these features, see the following Visual Studio Developer Tools blog article:

Test Plan and Test Suite Customization with TFS2013 Update3

• Cloud-based load testing with Application Insights
  You do not have to use resources and set up your own computers to do load testing on your website. You can use cloud-based load testing to provide virtual machines that generate the load of many users accessing your web site at the same time. When you run your load tests for your application by using Visual Studio Online, you can use Application Insights to retrieve performance data. By correlating load and performance data together, you can access more insight into any performance issues that you find.By using Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, you are no longer limited to a small set of Application counters that will be monitored together with the load run. Now you can select any performance counters from Application Insights that you want to view with your load run.

That’s it for 2013 so far. I’ll add 2013.4 if anything is new when that ships.

Mike