Testing Process Governance in Test Manager for applying review and sign-off workflows over test cases and test case logs.

Testing Process Governance provides a set of governance and compliance features which support customers who require a governance layer over their testing process. Testing objects which have Testing Process Governance enabled must be reviewed and signed off by an approver assigned to those objects.

Governance applies to two kinds of testing objects:

A test case log created from a governed test case always starts in In Work, regardless of whether the parent test case is In Work, In Review, or Signed at that moment.

A test case log can also be governed or un-governed directly at the log level afterward. Once governed, a log becomes a disjoint entity from its parent test case, so disabling governance on the parent test case afterward has no effect on logs already created. For details specific to test case logs, refer to Testing Process Governance for test case logs.

Testing Process Governance aims at providing a mechanism which ensures quality by transitioning test objects through review stages.

This workflow applies to test cases. Test case logs use the same three states and the same signing, voiding, and commenting mechanics, but a governed test case log always starts in the In Work state, and its exit path from Signed differs from that of a test case. For more information, refer to Testing Process Governance for test case logs.

Approvers are users assigned to a governed object for approval and sign off. Approvers do not require special permissions to sign a record. However, only users who hold the Test Process Governance role or the Test Process Governance permission can assign approvers to governed testing objects.

Approvers can be added to an object either by direct assignment or by group assignment. For the latter case, any member of the assigned group can sign the record.

A signatory record is a signature which is required for a governed object. Any assignment of a user or a group represents a signatory record.

Test case logs inherit all approvers from the parent test case at the time the log is created, and approvers can then be added to or removed from the log independently; see Managing approvers for governed test case logs. Approvers referencing a deleted user or group are flagged as such wherever they appear.

Governance (process) – Governed (attribute)

Governance is a toggle on test cases. Governed testing objects go through the following states (or approval statuses): In Work – In Review – Signed.

A test case log is governed automatically if its parent test case is governed at the time the log is created. Governance can also be toggled directly on the test case log afterward, independently of the parent test case; see Enabling governance at test case log level and Disabling governance at test case log level.

An approval state indicates the status of an object in the approval process: In Work – In Review – Signed.

The Test Process Governance permission is assigned by default to the Project Owner role, the Test Manager Administrator role, and the Test Governance Administrator role. The Test Process Governance permission is a task-level permission.

When the state of a governed object changes from In work to In review, all the assigned approvers receive an in-app notification and an email with a deep link they can access. If a user is part of a group, and both the user and the group are added as approvers, only one review notification will be sent to that user.

For test case logs specifically, this notification is sent individually to each assigned reviewer, with the message: "Test result {test execution name}-{test case log name} is ready for review."