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In September, we announced our latest collaboration with Portland State University’s Computer Science Capstone program, Test Runner for Jama Software, which is a native iOS application.

We’re pleased to say that Test Runner is now available for download in the Apple App Store. Test Runner is for use with all Jama Software customers with hosted instances.

Test Runner Features

The PSU students worked tirelessly for six months on the app, building out its functionality with help and guidance from Jama’s professional services team.

Test Runner was designed to mimic the workflow of Jama’s very own Test Center, allowing users to intuitively navigate through the app and quickly run through all assignments on the go. This gives current customers all the benefits of Jama’s test management abilities, with a greater degree of flexibility in the process.

Here’s a quick walkthrough of Test Runner, and some of the actions that can be completed while using it:

First, a user must have access to a hosted instance of Jama to use the app.
If that’s the case, a user is manually assigned a handful of tests from within Jama.
When the user is ready to test, they simply login using their username, password, and instance name (for example: https://test-instance.jamacloud.com would have the instance name “test-instance”)
Once logged in, users will be prompted to select the project they wish to test.
With a project selected, the user will step through an accordion-nested structure of test plans, cycles, and runs. All test plans within a project are displayed. Within each test plan, all available cycles will be listed. Each cycle contains all assigned test runs to the user.
When a test run is selected, users will be transitioned to the test screen, allowing them to select one step at a time. A test step can fail or pass during the test. Additional notes can be taken for a given test step.
An image can be uploaded for the overall test run, as well as any general notes the user may wish to include.
Once a test has been submitted from the app, it will no longer appear in the selection list. Only “Not-Run” test runs will be visible from the app.

Looking Ahead

The PSU capstone students who build Test Runner truly went above and beyond for our customers to deliver this simple, useful, and exciting app. And there’s more potential to come.

Since Test Runner will remain an open source project, users can actively contribute by submitting updated functionality or issues to the team’s repo on GitHub. Users are also encouraged to leave reviews on the Apple App Store.

Download Test Runner Now

Pictured from left to right: Lauren Cooper, Will Huiras, Jason Ritz, Ben Lawrence, Devan Cakebread, Meghan McBee, and David Wagg.

Jama Software is committed to our mission of helping customers bring their innovations to market faster, and with our reliable REST API we are doing just that. From custom data integrations to ETL tools, REST has proven to be an invaluable asset utilized by many of our customers.

REST has also lead to some innovations for Jama. In 2016, we worked with students from Portland State University (PSU) in the Capstone Program to develop a trace visualization tool: OverView for Jama.

Today, we are thrilled to announce our latest collaboration with this year’s PSU Capstone students, who developed the very first iOS mobile application for Jama, Test Runner. The application, which has been submitted to Apple’s App Store and is currently under review, will allow users to view and execute tests that have been assigned to them on the go.

Motivated Team

This year’s Capstone team was made up of seven talented students — Lauren Cooper, Will Huiras, Jason Ritz, Ben Lawrence, Devan Cakebread, Meghan McBee, and David Wagg — who are in their final year of computer science studies.

They were eager to be sponsored by Jama because “the project had a clearly-defined scope and purpose,” said team member Lauren Cooper.

Over several months, the students dove into pair programming and other Agile practices to plan, build, and test their iOS app.

“Initially, we had a steep learning curve — we never wrote an iOS app before and were very new to Swift programming language,” said team member David Wagg.

The students worked closely with Jama’s professional services and UX teams to build the Test Runner app.

Amazing App

When asked what they learned about users of the Test Runner app, Lauren Cooper said, “We have new, profound respect for product testers.”

During their product demo of Test Runner for Jama staff, the team called out how refreshing it was to use an API that was well-documented, straightforward, and responsive. You can view the team’s open-source project now on GitHub.

We loved seeing the results of this project and hope the PSU team’s work inspires our customers as much as it has us. A huge thanks to the entire team and PSU!

Note: This post will be updated with a link to the Test Runner application on the Apple App Store when it becomes available. For now, users can clone the team’s repository on GitHub, and install the application onto their iOS devices via Xcode.

Jama rolled out our REST API earlier this year, and we couldn’t wait to see what our customers would do with it. We’ve also had opportunities to work with organizations on good ways to leverage the API, including an exciting and unique engagement with Portland State University (PSU) computer science students in their Capstone Program. We’ve had great experiences working with PSU. Jama participates in their PCEP internship program, several Jama team members are alumni of PSU’s computer science program, and we’re always thrilled to work with students, helping them get a glimpse into how we make software to solve complex, real-world problems.

The Capstone team had seven students in their final year of computer science studies. They worked with our professional services and UX teams to build a web application that demonstrates the capabilities of Jama’s REST API and chose to focus on visualizing relationship data in Jama. “The opportunity to work with a local software company was incredible,” said team member Ricky Valencia. “We were excited to work with the Jama application and get the chance to learn from the team here.”

Over several months, the team dived into pair programming and other Agile practices to plan, build, and test their data visualization application. “Initially, we had a steep learning curve – a few of us hadn’t built web apps or even written in JavaScript,” said team member Michael Hansen. “We learned a lot during this process, including how to better gauge the amount of time needed to complete an objective and a lot about the intricacies of testing.” During their product demo to Jama staff, the team called out how refreshing it was to use an API that is solid and well-documented.

You can see their open-source project on the team’s GitHub. We loved seeing the results of this project and hope the team’s work inspires our customers as much as it has us.

Huge thanks to Michael Hansen, Ricardo Valencia, Chance Snow, Kathleen Tran, Marcus Week, Iman Bilal, Ruben Piatnitsky and Portland State University.