Overview of Microsoft Test Manager
For testers, there are many new features in Visual Studio 2010. You can now plan your testing effort. This includes creating test plans, test suites, test configurations, and test cases with individual test steps using the new application for testers called Microsoft Test Manager, as shown in the following illustration.
These artifacts are now part of your team project.
As a tester, you benefit from being able to gather diagnostic information when you run tests and automatically add this information to a bug. You can collect details of the actions that are performed when you run a manual test case. These details can be used the next time to fast forward manual testing.
Three products provide testing functionality in Visual Studio 2010:
Visual Studio Test Professional: This is primarily for the generalist tester who wants to create manual test cases, run these tests and view the results as part of a test plan. This SKU includes the new application called Microsoft Test Manager. This SKU can be installed quickly and easily on the test machine where the tester wants to run their tests. You can also run automated tests from Microsoft Test Manager if an automated test is associated with a test case using functionality in one of the following two SKUs.
Visual Studio 2010 Premium: This provides the features to enable a user to create unit tests and UI automated tests for an application. The tests that are created can be run from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, the command line, Team Foundation Build, or be associated with a test case and run from a test plan using Microsoft Test Manager.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate: This contains all the test functionality provided for Visual Studio 2010. It includes Microsoft Test Manager providing the functionality for planning, creating, and running test cases. It also enables you to create and run unit tests, UI automated tests, load tests and Web performance tests, generic tests and ordered tests using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. These automated tests can be run from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, the command line, Team Foundation Build, or be associated with a test case and run from a test plan using Microsoft Test Manager.
Additional software is provided for testing for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. This software is called Microsoft Visual Studio Agents 2010. It is available on a CD or it can be downloaded. This provides software for test controllers, test agents, build agents and lab agents.