Introduction

Nowadays, working as an QA or Manual Tester is more of how efficiently you can handle project(s). QAs are considered to be the persons that can contribute at every stage of software development and processes; be it planning or analysis stage or development or maintenance stage. But the real challenge comes in, if you are handling multiple projects or doing variety of tasks in a day.

In this article, I would be sharing some of the tools, that are really helpful in managing your day to day tasks and can minimize your effort (time) in achieving your day to day tasks. Here are my top 3 helpful tools;

1.      Swagger for API Testing

We already know that POSTMAN is the most commonly used, when you are doing API testing. But, managing and using it, can require a lot of your time in just preparing and setting up the tool to test the APIs for now and later use. For example, like copying and pasting the URL, Selecting the method, Creating the collection or entering the JSON body as input.

But Swagger UI, generally an API Documentation tool, can save this time of yours, where all the APIs, their URLs, methods and JSON bodies are already listed, you just need to execute the API and see the results. Its user-friendly UI helps in using it effectively and efficiently for developer and QAs, even for the product managers, clients and partners.

2.      Zephyr (Jira Add-On) for Test Case Management

To create test case is one of the primary tasks of a QA engineer, but maintaining them is one of the key aspects of it and sometimes it not easily maintained or messed up. People generally use spreadsheets to create test case, which is not beneficial for long term use. Zephyr, which can be installed as an Add-on in JIRA, is one really helpful tool where you can create test cases, add them to test suites, schedule the test executions and link them with the other tickets (such as Story or Tasks) in JIRA.

Zephyr also provides you the dashboard where various metrices data is shown to you, as shown in the above screenshot. Along with you, you can generate various reports as well. With all these helpful features, it can easily increase your work efficiency and provides you easy solution for your test cases related work. Please note that, it is a paid tool and free trial for some time only.

3.      Browser stack for Cross Browser Testing

Whenever we are working on a Website project, its user interface and user experience plays a vital role in the success of the project. Projects which are targeting to hit a large marketplace or variety of users with its launch required a lot of user experience related testing which included the cross-browser testing as well. And to perform this activity BrowserStack can be a powerful tool which can help us in carrying out this test very smoothly. Because if we plan to do it manually, this test will eat a lot of time of us. BrowserStack can help us doing real time tests across 3000+ browsers and devices.

This tool also enables to run the test and save the screenshots directly as well. Also, it allows us to automate the tests as well. Overall, It’s a very helpful and popularly used tool for cross browser testing.

Conclusion

From a very personal experience, by using these tools in your daily work life and tasks of QA, I am sure they can add a lot to your efficiency and help you in carrying out your tasks as well.