Creating milestones in TestRail is a useful way to track the progress of your testing efforts and ensure that you are on track to meet your project goals. A milestone is a significant point in your testing cycle, such as:
- Release of a new version of your system
- Completion of a specific set of tests (i.e.: security)
- Completion of a business objective
Creating a new milestone
You can create a milestone with the help of the below steps:
- From the TestRail Dashboard, navigate to your project
- Click on the MILESTONES tab
- Click on the Add Milestone button
- In the Add Milestone screen, you will be prompted to enter the details of your milestone. These details include the milestone Name, References, Parent, Description, Start Date, End Date, After entering the milestone details, click the Add Milestone button to create the milestone
- Your new milestone will now appear in the MILESTONES section, where you can view, edit, and manage it as needed.
Associating test runs and plans to milestones
Associating a test run with a milestone in TestRail provides several benefits to project teams. Test runs are a set of tests that are executed together, usually for a specific purpose or objective. On the other hand, a milestone is a significant event in the testing process that marks the completion of a significant phase or the beginning of a new one. By associating test runs with milestones, you can get improved traceability, better planning, and efficient management of testing activities.
To associate the test run with a milestone, select the milestone that you want to assign the test run to from the Milestone dropdown list while adding a new test run. You can also add a Milestone to an existing test run by editing it.
Associating test runs to milestones makes it easier to track the progress of the test runs.
Starting a milestone
There are two milestone stages: Open and Upcoming. An open milestone is a milestone that is currently in progress and has already started. An upcoming milestone is a milestone that has a start date that is in a future time.
Creating a milestone in TestRail will be listed as an upcoming milestone until the start date is in the past. To make it easier to start a milestone, you can use the Start link in the upcoming milestones list.
- To start an upcoming milestone, click on the Start link
- In the Start Milestone dialog box, provide a Start Date which is in the past and click the Start Milestone button.
- This will move the milestone from the Upcoming section to the Open section
Adding child milestones
In TestRail, you can create a milestone within a milestone to track progress at a granular level. This feature is useful for breaking down large projects into smaller, manageable sub-projects. In other words, you can create child milestones within the parent milestone.
For adding a child milestone within the parent milestone, first, you navigate to the Add Milestone screen. Here, you can choose the parent milestone from the Parent drop-down box. You can enter the details for the child milestone, such as its name, description, and due date.
Once you have added child milestones to the parent milestone, you can view them inside the parent milestone and manage them like any other milestones in TestRail.