Learn about Defect Management in SAP Cloud ALM

In this blog post I will give you a short overview of defect management in SAP Cloud ALM.

It is now possible to create Defects in SAP Cloud ALM. These defects can be based on test execution, but they don’t have to. It is also possible to create defects “outside” of testing.

For those of you who are familiar with SAP Cloud ALM, you will easily recognize that the defects are in fact a new type of Task objects. Therefore, you will find lots of familiarities between these 2 entities.

But let’s start in test execution, indeed most of the time the defects will be created during the testing phases, hence the execution of test cases (both Manual and Automated).

This is a screenshot from the test execution list:

Test Execution List Defect Creation

You can see in the list a new column called Defects. In this column you will see the number of defects currently related to the test execution, and you can either create a new defect or assign an existing one.

When creating a new one:

Defect Creation

You navigate directly to the defect application; the name is automatically filled for you (in the future the description will also be filled based on the test run details):

You can then set the following attributes for the defect:

• Scope (taken over from the test case)
• Priority
• Due date
• Team
• Assigned Role
• Assignee
• Tags

Defect Attributes

Upon save you will come back directly to the test execution list:

Where we can see the relationship established between the test run and the defect.

We will also find this information in the defect itself:

Let’s look at the possible statuses for the defect:

• New
• In Progress
• Retest Required
• Postponed
• Closed

This schema is indeed simple, but it is simple on purpose, and although it cannot be customized at this time, you can still be smart and use tags to simulate sub-statuses if needed.

For instance, if the “In Progress” status is too generic for your organization or ways of working, you can add some specific tags like “In classification” or “Under Correction” or anything that you would like. You can then use these tags in the defect list as filters to get exact the reporting that you want.

Tag based filtering

In short, you can benefit from all the advanced capabilities of the tasks with the defects as well:

• Tags
• Filtering
• Assignment
• …

You can also specifically assign the defects to members of your team so that they can easily access their own defect/task list and work on them.

We are also delivering a new card about defects in the overview page:

Defect Card

Recent updates

I am happy to announce that we have just delivered new functionalities for the defect management. You can now create defects directly from the Manual Test Case Execution app:

Defect Overview and Creation

We have also released a history on defects in the analytics section:

Defect History – Column Chart

Another view:

Defect History – Bubble Chart

Outlook

Soon you will also be able to create defects directly from the manual test execution app for a specific test action.

We will also soon deliver more analytics and reporting on defects.

This was a short overview on the defects in SAP Cloud ALM, I hope that this information was beneficial to you.

Stay tuned for more functionalities coming up soon.