5 Reasons Why You Should Supplement Jira for Testing

Jira is the issue tracking software of choice for many development teams, and is often sought as the first attempt platform to track tests. Jira does make it easy to log and track issues, especially since so many dev teams also rely on it.

However, if you really want to conduct your testing thoroughly and holistically, you’ll find that Jira alone does not meet all your needs. Read on to learn Jira’s shortcomings and to hear our recommendation for managing tests alongside Jira.

5 reasons why Jira alone can’t solve your testing needs

Jira is great at what it does. However, it was designed primarily to help dev teams track features and issues, plan sprints, and view progress. That means there are some key weaknesses when you use it as your only testing solution.

1. Jira reports on issues rather than test results

Nearly all testing is pass-fail—either the test passed or it failed. This is especially true for test automation. However, Jira specializes in tracking issues, things like bugs, improvements, features, etc. There needs to be a link between test results and issues—a bug is created when a test fails for instance. However, Jira does not show execution history in an organized way. This means that you may need to create separate issues for each run, which is cumbersome and makes it difficult to see execution history.

2. Jira was designed for managing dev projects, not tests

Jira is great at agile development tracking. However, there is a world of difference between managing a sprint and managing software testing. One of the most significant differences comes from the nature of what is being tracked and planned. In a sprint, you are dealing with tasks. Each task is unique, and once complete, it is marked as done. Test planning is very different. Efficient testing requires you to reuse tests repeatedly. To accomplish this in Jira, you would need to supplement with a testing tool.

3. Jira doesn’t allow tests to be reused across multiple projects

Jira issues are strange beasts. They can only ever be mapped to a single project. This is one of the main reasons why reuse is so hard. The upshot is, test steps that should be reused between multiple tests end up being duplicated. Take log in for instance. This is probably a prerequisite of many of your tests. Of course, you could require that tests start in the logged-in state, but that can be a limitation. It is far easier to create a reusable set of test steps that log a test user in when required. Having to repeatedly recreate these steps just takes time and effort that could better be used elsewhere.

4. Jira’s storage constraint can hinder scalability

In an agile environment, you typically run thousands of tests every day. Every round of testing adds tens of thousands of test results to comb through for bugs. This creates a lot of unnecessary storage on your Jira instance, which can slow things down for your teams. As more data gets stored and processed, Jira can start to behave badly, with performance issues such as email halts, stalls, slowdowns, or crashes.  

5. Jira doesn’t provide testing infrastructure

You need testing infrastructure to run automated tests, whether you test using servers or using cloud VMs. Jira does not provide any infrastructure to execute your tests, which means that you’ll need to rely on your DevOps teams to procure and configure this infrastructure. Building this from scratch requires not only a lot of effort, but it can be incredibly expensive. This is why many organizations look for testing tools that provide a built-in cloud to run flexibly at scale.

Functionize provides intelligent test automation for Jira

We recognize the value Jira brings to dev teams, but also see its shortcomings for testing. So, we’ve built an integration that allows you to scale low-code test automation and work alongside Jira. Functionize supercharges your Jira workflows and brings testers and developers closer together. Log defects in Jira directly from Functionize tests to create traceability on both sides.

Functionize is purpose-built to manage large-scale automated testing.

Our platform is designed for scale. Run up to tens of thousands of tests in parallel across browsers. The orchestration results give you a summary and an option to drill down to each run and test step. You can also easily reuse, modify and version your tests. Use Functionize to run and rerun tests with different parameters: different environments, different geographies, different datasets.

You can run tests “on the fly”, schedule them to be run on a recurring basis, or trigger them using a CI tool. Functionize can integrate with Jira projects on a “many to many” basis:

• Log bugs from multiple Functionize projects into a single Jira project
• Log bugs from a single Functionize project into multiple Jira projects

This kind of flexibility is crucial for large enterprises that need to manage software development projects across multiple applications and teams.

Too many duplicate tests in Jira can lead to performance issues, but Functionize mitigates this situation. By creating only defects in Jira rather than all your tests, you save on the storage space needed to run your automated tests. Jira administrators love Functionize because it protects their Jira instance and helps to preserve its scalability.

Functionize builds on the strengths of Jira and extends its capabilities.

Functionize encourage transparency, since you can create unlimited tests and invite unlimited users. Resolve Jira defects faster using the Jira defect resolution displayed in Functionize. This allows you to rerun tests as soon as Jira bugs are ready for validation. Speed up testing and bring testers and developers closer together with Functionize’s Jira integration. Find out more about Intelligent Test Automation for Jira now.