Understanding Test Case Management

Testing an application before releasing it to the user is essential to the software development process. Testing helps the software development team to deliver a better quality product to the users. 

However, the difficulty in testing is directly proportional to the complexity of the application. It gets tricky to remember all the functionalities of the application that one needs to test. Therefore noting down each functionality the user requires in the application and the proof required to verify its success is essential. Each instance of this note is called a Test Case. One must manage these test cases efficiently to ensure faster and better results. 

In this guide, let us dive into the definition of test case management, its importance, and how to manage test cases efficiently.

What is a Test Case and Test Case Management?

A test case is a compilation of inputs, testing procedures, running conditions, and expected output. It helps the team describe a test they should execute to obtain a specific objective/functionality. A test case generally includes a test ID, title, description, requirements, script, notes, and many other details. Managing these test cases is called Test Case Management. It is a process that entails test planning, test estimation, test monitoring, and test reporting.

Different Types of Test Cases

The different types of test cases are listed below:

1. User Interface Test Cases: These are compiled to ensure that the application’s aesthetics appear as planned.
2. Functionality Test Cases: These help ensure that the application’s expected functionalities work correctly. 
3. Performance Test Cases: These cases help verify the response time and efficiency. 
4. Security Test Cases: These are compiled to secure the application data and restrict the application’s use to specific users.
5. Integration Test Cases: These help ensure that interfaces between multiple modules of an application are working as expected.
6. Usability Test Cases: These cases help enhance the application’s user experience.
7. Database Test Cases: These help ensure that the application can collect, store, process and handle data appropriately.

Why is Test Case Management Important

Test Case Management helps in the following ways:

• It gives a clear idea of the testing activities to a testing team. The team will know what tests to execute and what to expect if the test succeeds or fails.
• It helps to keep track of test cases and group them into categories like resolved, deferred, ongoing, etc.
• It helps manage automated and manual testing more efficiently.
• It helps manage a range of test executions for various test cases.
• It improves the collaboration efforts between project engineers even if they belong to different teams.

How to Manage Test Cases Effectively?

Here are 7 effective test case management tips that every developer and tester must know-

• Better Management of Test Case Specifics

The test case management process can be significantly hindered if the testing team doesn’t take the specifications seriously. The test case specifications like ID, title, description, etc., should not be very complicated; instead, they should follow a specific pattern for ease of understanding. The test cases should define the input and expected output with utmost detail so that the testing team can perform the test better.

Compiling test cases should be as important as the testing process. It should undergo thorough editing and proofreading to rectify any errors. This process will ensure successful testing in a shorter period. Furthermore, the testing team will be able to manage more test cases in a given amount of time.

• Introducing a Central Test Repository

Test Case Management is crucial while working on software development projects in huge IT companies. This is because the probability of having similar tests is higher in large IT projects. A central repository helps to boost productivity and brings immense value to the testing team. It will help the various testing teams working on the same project to keep track of each other. A central test repository will also dismiss the change of multiple teams working on the same test case to save time and effort.

• Using Test Case Management Tools

In massive IT projects, it can be challenging to keep track of a large number of test cases manually. This is where test case management tools help the testing team build test cases and keep track of them efficiently. It enhances the security of the testing data and only grants access to the employees with clearances. Test case management tools automatically flag duplicate test cases, saving time and effort. These tools are designed to integrate with various testing platforms that can increase the software development team’s productivity.

BrowserStack’s Automate can be integrated with the qTest to help manage your test cases. BrowserStack helps you seamlessly test on 3000+ different real devices and browsers.

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• Implementing Automation for managing test cases

Automation has become one of the best methods to improve the test coverage, execution speed, and effectiveness of the testing team. However, not all test cases should be automated. Automation should be implemented for the test cases that fall in the categories listed below:

• Time-consuming cases
• Repetitive
• Critical test cases

One should not implement automation for a new type of test case that has not been executed manually even once. If the requirements of the cases are constantly changing, Automation is not a good idea. Some of the benefits of implementing Automation for managing test cases are as follows:

• Faster execution as compared to manual testing
• Automation brings consistency and reliability to results
• Improves efficiency and reduces cost & time of test case management

Try using BrowserStack’s Automate to implement automated testing for your test cases to speed up your testing efforts and accelerate the shipment delivery. BrowserStack offers a Real Device Cloud that has over 3000+ browsers and devices. This allows multiple testers to access the same device at a given time. You can sign up for free & try services.

• Adjusting the scope of testing

Testers have to choose which tests to cover in any given scenario because of time and money constraints. Tests should always consider the risk and critical nature before deciding which tests to conduct. 

Prioritizing the right test cases would help organisations save time, effort, and resources. Running all the test cases consumes time & effort to maintain. And for complex applications, it becomes an impossible task to test every scenario. Hence, choosing the right test case for testing helps achieve milestones along with customer requirements. 

For example, suppose a tester has to decide between 2 test cases. One involves a complex feature for a satisfied user, and the other consists of fixing a simple bug for a dissatisfied user. The test should go for the simple bug to improve customer satisfaction. But the tester needs to know these details about users before making a decision.

• Reviewing the test cases for duplicates

It is common to encounter the same bugs being raised multiple times when multiple teams are working on a single IT project. This results in the creation of duplicate test cases, which leads to a wastage of time and resources. The testing team should be aware of these duplicates. Implementing Automation for test case management can reduce the likelihood of duplicates.

• Making a log of test case tasks and activities

Logging all the tasks and activities can help ramp up your test case management. It includes jotting down all the relevant issues, critical observations, etc. This can aid the testing team in identifying the deviations in the testing plan and ensuring that tests are carried out as planned. This also helps the testing team to keep track of the progress achieved by the testing team. 

A test case is a series of activities and tasks that must be performed on the application to verify its workability and if it satisfies the user’s requirements. Test case management involves the management of these test cases to ensure superior quality of products via efficient testing efforts. As the complexity of the application increases, the number of test cases increases, and so does the complexity of test case management. 

Testing on real devices allows the testing team, to identify and replicate issues under real user conditions. This increases efficiency and accuracy. That said, testing on real devices comes with high setup and maintenance costs. BrowserStack completely eliminates the setup and maintenance costs of maintaining real devices by offering a real device cloud. These are real devices hosted on the cloud. With this, you can perform live and automation tests on 3000+ real devices and browser versions. You can perform automation tests using frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, Playwright and Puppeteer. 

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