Beaker

Overview

Beaker is a web-based software test creator and manager.  It’s meant to be used for small shops that need to create tests and use cases for new or existing software.

Beaker Project Page

Live Demo Site

Beaker Docs

I have found that present-day enterprise test management software is needlessly complicated and ends up actually discouraging people from doing standardized testing.  Not to mention it’s outrageously expensive.  I get the sense that the people who decide to buy these things are not the people who actually use them on a day to day basis.

With Beaker you can be up and creating tests in a few minutes.  It won’t take long for you to figure out how it works.  For the most part it tries to stay out of your way while you make and run tests.  If you want, you can (or will be able to) generate reports or snapshots of what tests were run and the results of each.

Beaker is written in Python/Django and can be setup relatively easily.  In addition there is a VMWare appliance that can be downloaded which has Beaker setup and ready to go.  You would need the free VMWare Player to give it a go, though.

Terms

To really understand how Beaker works, you need to know what these terms mean.  They’re kind of self-explanatory but here it is anyway:

Application An application that you want to test
Version A version of the application you want to test.  An application has versions.
Category A group of related tests.  An application contains categories
Test A test is a series of steps that the tester executes to confirm expected results
Test Run An instance of a test that can be marked as passed or failed.  Also each step in the test run can be marked as passed or failed
Test Bundle A set of tests that have been grouped together with the intention of being run all at once

Workflow

The intended workflow is something like this:

  1. Create an application we’ll call Atomizer
  2. Create a new version for that application, say v1.0
  3. Create a couple of categories for the application: User Interface, Engine
  4. Create a new test for Atomizer – v1.0 – we’ll call it Login and file it under the User Interface category
  5. Add some steps to the test like:
    1. Open Chrome
    2. Type in username admin
    3. Type in password password
    4. Press the Login button
    5. Verify that you are redirected to the front page and that your username appears in the upper right corner.
    6. Run the test.  Follow the steps marking each as passed as you go.  If you feel comfortable with the run then mark the whole test passed.