In my project, We follow agile methodology for our software development & we have release once in every 4 weeks. With continuous development, build & testing, we used to spend a lot of time in sending out a detailed status email on defects for each project to higher management.
In this article, I would like to show how I have implemented an automated status report email for my project where HP ALM(QC) is used for defect management.
HP ALM:
ALM (Application life cycle management) is a web based application from HP used to manage the project planning, requirements, test cases, defects etc. It used to be called Quality Center (QC) till its version 10.
Design / Framework:
- There is an external property file which contains ALM project details to send this automated email for any project just by updating the property file.
- I have created a .Net exe which contains 4 important modules/classes.
- ALMUtil – to connect ALM & get the information from ALM server for the given project.
- ChartUtil – to create nice graphs for the given data.
- ResultBuilder – to combine the chart & other information into a nice readable status report.
- MailUtil – to send the email to the team.
Sample Defect Status EMail:
Summary:
By using ALM API – I came up with an executable which has been scheduled to run @5PM daily to send the defects status to the entire team. It has been designed to be customized for any project.
It saves 30-45 mins of our time from sending daily status email & It can also help us in sending the status more often.