Gone are days when testers glued themselves to chairs with Spreadsheets open in front of them for most of their work hours. Test cases, issues, status and everything alike were maintained in a single spreadsheet and should there be multiple projects, then the task of categorizing those was even cumbersome. Many software professionals were more than frustrated to complete years of technical graduation and end up in working all things spreadsheet. Nonetheless, as aforementioned, those days are bygones.

Thanks to a plethora of software tools that are now more easy to handle, less cumbersome to work with, and the least time-consuming. This article sheds some light on why test management tools are way better than spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets are Time-Consuming

When developers/Testers use a spreadsheet to maintain all their unit testing work products, getting data into the sheet is a tiresome and time-consuming process.

On the other end, if you go for testing tools like QATouch, you have the opportunity to upload the test cases with just a few clicks and reuse the test cases for the similar projects.

Feedback Loop

Let us consider a situation, as a tester, you found a bug and shared it with your developer through a spreadsheet. Initially, it would be easy to manage. But once you raised more than three or four bugs for the same module, then it would be a pain to understand for both the parties.

In test management tools, you can quickly look into bug history and adequately understand the life cycle of bug and its current state.

User Management

If you work on various projects, then it will be difficult to share the same sheet to your developer’s team. You can manage different sheet for a different project but when you need some data in quick time its next to impossible.

In test management tools, you have the option to explicitly define every team members role and update their work with ease.

Reusable

Previously created test cases can be easily reused when you deploy tools to manage your projects.

Under One Roof

When you want to look into the big picture of the project, it can be done from tool dashboard. Not just with mere numbers, you can have a rich visualization of the project. (a picture is worth thousand words)

Tool Integration

Most of existing test management tools come with the option to integrate with different tools. For example, QATouch comes with JIRA integration so that developers who can look at the issues raised by testers within their JIRA platform.

Conclusion:

All that said, in a nutshell, spreadsheets are eating up your time, while test management tools could save lots of that, thanks to the easy-to-use interface, clever algorithms and automation behind the scenes, and last but definitely not the least reduced human errors.