UAT Test Script Case Example

One of the biggest issues with writing UAT test cases, is knowing where to start and insisting on building your test script around the software. The fact is, you do not need access to Ivanti Service Manager (ISM, powered by HEAT IT Service Management) and it is actually encouraged not to use ISM at all when devising UAT Test Scripts.

Writing UAT Test Scripts for ISM HEAT is not unlike writing a letter to a long lost friend. At first you don’t know where to start, the first few words are tough to get out. But as you start writing, and you focus on the subject matter, the words turn into sentences, paragraphs, and pages.

Same goes for UAT Test Cases. Start simple, and remember, it’s about defining test cases for day-to-day job functions, not system testing of software, features, or functionality.

You should focus on:

• Test Script Case Subject | What are we validating?
• Test Script Case Details | Optional if you need to expand on the subject at hand
• Subject Matter Experts | Who is validating?
• Input Steps | What are the steps, think SOP, that testers need to take to carry out the test
• Input Data | Sample test data and supporting artifacts
• Expected Results | What is the expected output?

For example, if you were to write use cases for a kitchen, you would make a list of all the use cases (criteria if you will), such as Making Breakfast, Making Lunch, Coffee, Washing Dishes, etc. You don’t need to have a kitchen, and you don’t need to cook an omelette to document a use case for breakfast. All you need to do is visualize the steps, intended input, and expected results. High level, bullet form. Anything more becomes training documentation.

In this Use Case example, steps would be prepare ingredients, follow recipe, cook, season to taste, and eat. Input would be your ingredients, output is an omelette. The case steps may reference a combination of training materials (how to crack eggs, mix ingredients, recipe steps if you will) and standard operating procedures, aka SOPs (using the stove, properly food handling, storage, etc). Training materials and SOPs are important references, however separate from UAT Test Script Cases.

As you can see, UAT Test Cases should be simple, high level, and do not require ISM HEAT access, and shouldn’t be confused with Training Materials or SOPs. You should consult Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), the end users, to ensure you have covered all the possible scenarios. In this example, this would be the chef. In the real world this could be the Service Desk Manager, Service Desk Analyst Lead, Storage Techs for Asset Scanning and Storage Management, Procurement Lead for Accounting, Purchase Order related cases, and so on.

Last but not least, your focus should be on Test Case Scenarios, not features, functionality, or software. That’s System testing. We’re not testing the recipe or stove’s every button and dial. We are constructing high level use cases and scenarios, of day-to-day operations.

If you’re looking for sample ISM UAT Test Cases and Scripts from the a19 Consulting – Ivanti Best Practice System then be sure to contact us! We’ve been providing HEAT (now Ivanti Service Manager) Professional Services since 1996 and can help!

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WHAT IS ISM BLACKOUT?

Blackout, is a point in time in the development process when a system becomes unavailable (off-line) by design. The term comes from Electricity “blackouts” when there is a complete electric shut down.

A best practice is to take the UAT system off-line when UAT is undergoing maintenance or configuration in preparation for End User Acceptance testing. This is to prevent any unauthorized access by end users that might want to start testing the system before it’s ready, which is never a good idea. After all, you don’t call the building inspector until you’re up to code, right? Leaving UAT available during configuration can be disastrous. Don’t make this rookie ISM mistake, you will thank me later!

ISM Blackout
UAT Best Practice Tip

Best Practice – List Styles

Here is a great example for “Quick Wins” which are low effort and high benefit, as discussed the other day in my post Scoping Priorities.

Project Task List – Color Coding

A best practice that you can find throughout the a19 Consulting Best Practice system is to use color coding where possible, especially with lists, so it is visually easy and quick to identify important records or columns, such as the Status, Start Date, End Date, and Owner of Project Tasks by using style expressions. Why the owner? For a meaningful project overview of project tasks.

ISM Project Dashboard Example

a19 Consulting – Best Practice Tip
Style Expressions

• Tasks with a status of Logged (Yellow)
• Tasks assigned to self (Blue)
• Start/End Date met (Green)
• Start/End Date not met (Red)

sample style expression

$(if CurrentDateTime() > EndDate &&
Status not in (“Completed”, “Rejected”, “Cancelled”)
then “RedBox”
else if CurrentDateTime() > StartDate && CurrentDateTime() < EndDate
then “GreenLabel”
else “Default”)

Scope of Work Priorities

When you are gathering Ivanti Service Manager (ISM) and Ivanti Asset Manager (IAM) requirements to build your Solution Design Documentation and Scope of Work (SOW) there is one very important best practice. Set Implementation Priorities!

setting priorities for your ISM project

Scoping is an art of finding the right balance between effort, benefits, and long term gains. Quick Wins should be your 1st Priority (P1) followed by long term gains which are Priority 2 (P2) and have the highest benefits.

For example, on a recent Asset Management implementation the core project team determined that the quickest wins and highest benefits would be asset scanning and a foundation for procurement and assets (hardware and software) that we could built upon on future phases.

ITSM Priorities by Benefit and Effort

That lead us to this high level scope:

• P1 – Asset Scanning / Procurement Foundation
• P2 – Software Asset Management (SAM)
• P3 – Hardware Asset Management Enhancements

What this meant was that we would build asset scanning capabilities not only for assets but also packing slips, replace the existing purchase order tracking excel sheets, and vendor inventory tracking sheets from Softchoice and various software vendors, with an Ivanti Service Manager product catalog for hardware and software, utilized the purchase order workspace for sales orders, enabled contracts and entitlements for software inventory, and built a softchoice integration to automatically update invoice and shipping information and functionality to reconcile against packing slips and purchase orders.

These were just our P1’s and P2’s! With further integration to discovery tools, enhancements to assets, and workflow automation for P3. Of course keep in mind that upon project completion some of the other requirements from the parking lot will become P1’s and P2’s and the cycle begings.

Along the way we identified more quick wins that improved overall product usability and project tracking:

• ISM Administrator Level 2 Role – for limited admin access with dedicated top level tabs to manage assigned validation lists and some configurations without full administration console access
  
• a19 Consulting Tracker – a custom built project tracking tool by a19 Consulting with backlog, artifacts, parking lot, status updates, project dashboard, heat release project and package tracking, to-do list, and many more features
  
• a19 Consulting Change Control with Announcements, Alerts, Notifications, and approval process for User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
  
• a19 Consulting UAT Test Scripts Workspace for ISM Administrators and Consultants to develop test scripts, run test scripts, log defect, pass/fail tests, request enhancements and identify show stoppers, must-haves, and nice-to-haves

If you would like more information for the a19 Consulting Best Practice Tool set or need help defining and executing your scope of work please contact me!

Security Sessions History

Determining your actively logged in users is a little tricky in ISM.

Security History (Frs_ops_logon_history)

Security sessions are derived from the security history business object (Frs_ops_logon_history) and used the status value and logout time to determine “security session” by event type and login type.

This makes identifying the number of active sessions challenging as aggregate functions do not allow use of the distinct function. This limits the use of dashboard parts, as you will get false counts per user.

a19 Consulting – Best Practice System

An advanced workaround would be to create a summarized table similar to the a19 Consulting Best Practice System‘s implementation. More on that on a future blog post.

ISM Administration Tip

PS: Remember one of the culprits for users staying logged in is the dashboard setting for auto-refresh. Setting your security session timeout alone does not solve the issue, you must ensure that the Auto refresh (in minutes) on your dashboards is disabled or set higher than the session timeout number.

Best Practice Tip – UAT Action Plan

One of the most crucial steps in System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is User Acceptance Testing (UAT), a type of system and business objective validation, performed by the end users, and business objective sign off by the project owner; not to be confused with System Testing which is performed by the Ivanti Developer and/or ISM Administrator

Many Ivanti Service Manager implementations fall short when it comes to proper UAT Testing, be it due to a lack of resources, time, or budget, but more often than not due to a shortcoming of proper UAT Action Plan and UAT Test Cases and Scripts.

Today we will focus on a sample high level UAT Action plan:

• Refresh UAT with PROD (ISM Administrator)
• Push Asset Scanner Packages to UAT (ISM Consultant)
• Create UAT Test Cases/Scripts (ISM Administrator/Knowledge Manager; with assistance from ISM Consultant)
• Create Documentation for ISM Users (ISM Administrator/Knowledge Manager with assistance from ISM Consultant)
• Test Data Preparation (ISM Administrator)
• Test Run (ISM Administrator)
• UAT Run (ISM Administrator+ Storage Managers)
• Remediation (ISM Consultant)*
• UAT Run (ISM Administrator+ Storage Managers)*
  • Including Validation of Documentation and Knowledge Article Creation (ISM Administrator/Knowledge Manager)  
• Confirm Business Objectives – Sign Off (Project Owner)
• Schedule Push to PROD (ISM Consultant)
• Communication Plan (Core Team)
  • ISM Change Control Announcement
  • ISM Change Control Email with Documentation
    • Determine schedule
      • Before – for example 3 days before
      • At PROD Push
      • After – optional – follow up 
• PROD Push (ISM Consultant)
• Validate PROD Push (Core Team)
• PROD Emergency Support – 1 to 2 hours after push – (ISM Consultant)

If you’re looking for sample ISM UAT Test Cases and Scripts from the a19 Consulting – Ivanti Best Practice System then be sure to contact us!

Former Kifinti Solutions Consultant releases Ivanti Service Manager Best Practices System

Providing Ivanti Professional Services to Fortune 500 enterprise clients and Ivanti business partners (Avante Solutions, Kifinti Solutions, DDS IT, and others), worldwide, since 1996, we have developed an Ivanti Asset Manager Best Practice System to complement our Ivanti Service Manager Best Practice System to deliver superior results by implementing simplified standard business processes and improved simplified interface that enables you to do more with less and cut implementation and consulting costs significantly.  

“It takes time to develop an overnight successful Ivanti Best Practices System. In our case over 2 decades of HEAT IT Service Management and Ivanti Service Manager experience.” says Gregor Anton, a former Kifinti Solutions Consultant, and unique and distinctive authority in the Enterprise Service Management space with his consulting and development experience and extensive insight to best practices going back to 1996 with the HEAT and now Ivanti Service Manager (ISM) and Ivanti Asset Manager (IAM) products.

Providing HEAT ITSM Best Practices and now Ivanti Best Practices, with his tried, tested, and true implementations, and upgrades, Gregor now focuses on his company, a19 Consulting, and his a19 Ivanti Best Practices System.

Gregor has been developing, streamlining, and implementing best practices and latest solutions for fortune 500 companies and Frontrange Business Partners (Change Control, Avante Solutions, Kifinti Solutions) and Ivanti Business Partners (Kifinti Solutions, DDS IT), worldwide.

The Ivanti Asset Manager Best Practices complement the already successful Ivanti Service Manager Best Practices System that Gregor has developed.

Hardware Asset Management features include improved Asset Scanning and Procurement Processes, an integration to Softchoice and many other Vendors, as well as Product Catalog Maintenance features. Software Asset Management also takes a front seat with Vendor integration, contract and entitlement management, and best practices to guide through Software version maintenance, to name just a few features.

“Gregor and a19 Consulting were able to work with us to align our working processes with the workflows within the Ivanti Service Manager tool, leveraging a19 Ivanti Best Practices and latest solutions. The implementation team from Kifinti Solutions were helpful in getting it up and running, but we needed someone that could take EXP to the next level and configure the tool so we could utilize all of its potential,” says Steven Morin, Helpdesk Manager, at EXP.

The ITxM Space (ITSM, IT Service Management, ITAM, IT Asset Management) has never been more exciting, as is the transformation to ESM (Enterprise Service Management).

Contact us for more information on the latest solutions & best practices for your Ivanti Service Manager implementation.

http://ivanti.bestpractice.systems/

Full Press Release Here

a19 Consulting – Ivanti Best Practice System
for Ivanti Service and Asset Manager (ISM/IAM)