Over a decade ago, I started my journey as a QC engineer. Early on, I learned the value of test planning and detailed test cases for each feature or change. My manager's role was crucial at that time. She reviewed my test cases and gave feedback on their structure and coverage. This advice significantly shaped my understanding and approach to software testing.

As time passed, I found writing and maintaining detailed test cases to be time-consuming and burdensome. Unconsciously, this led me to a growing dislike of the activity. As a result, I started skipping it for small new changes.

During my tenure at software houses, many projects had tight deadlines and short support windows. I often bypassed detailed test cases. Instead, I created a checklist to track coverage. This strategy proved surprisingly effective under these constraints.

Transitioning to leadership: What new challenges did I face?

However, stepping into a leadership role in a fast-paced startup was challenging. The company had millions of daily users, frequent updates, and ever-changing business needs and designs. My team and I encountered several issues with our test suites.

Inconsistent writing styles

Each team member had their own style of writing test cases. This diversity led to confusion and increased cognitive load required to understand test cases authored by other team members during execution.

Frequent product changes

The constant need to update test cases in response to frequent product changes made it feel like a waste of time for many team members, leading to partial neglect of this task.

Lack of archives:

As we were updating our old test cases with new changes, the lack of an archive for old test cases made it difficult to revisit previous versions when necessary.

Other issues emerged over time 🤦‍♀️

As we navigated these challenges, new issues surfaced:

Release regression challenges

Our regression testing often relied on team knowledge rather than a comprehensive test suite, resulting in inconsistent coverage depending on who was running the test.

Difficulty with root cause analysis

When production bugs occurred, it was often difficult to determine whether the affected scenarios had been tested, complicating root cause analysis.

Onboarding new team members

New team members struggled to test the product with the same level of accuracy as experienced team members due to a lack of comprehensive test documentation and product knowledge.

These experiences highlighted the critical need for well-maintained and consistent test cases to ensure thorough testing and effective team collaboration. Addressing this issue has become my primary focus and challenge with every new team I join. After much trial and error, I believe I have found an effective solution for managing test cases within the Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). In this blog, I will share insights and strategies on all things related to test case management.

Before delving into specific guidelines, let's first take a look over Test Case Management Tools. The right tool's features and capabilities will significantly influence how effectively you can create, manage, and maintain test cases.

What are test management tools and how do you choose the right one?

Test case management tools are software designed to help teams manage their testing activities in terms of creating and maintaining test cases, as well as managing test execution.

Some tools are pretty basic, offering straightforward functionality for managing test cases. Others come with a range of advanced features that can boost your testing process:

• Customization for managing test cases, test plans, and test runs.
• Features to track changes and easily search for tests.
• Test tracking, traceability matrices, and reporting.
• Integrations with tools such as issue trackers and single sign-on providers.
• Compatibility with automated scripting.
• Security features like MFA and UAM.

Here are some examples of different test management tools: TestRail, Testiny, QA Touch, TestCollab, TestLodge, XRay, Qase, Zephyr … etc.

To select a proper tool, you need to consider the following evaluation activities:

Assess your needs

Evaluate the size and complexity of your projects or products, the size of your team, and your testing approach whether it is purely manual, a mix of manual and automated testing, or predominantly automated.

Define Key Features

Identify essential features and desirable extras based on your company’s needs. This will help narrow down the range of tools you’re considering.

Consider scalability

Think about future growth in team size and product scope. This will ensure the selected tool can scale with your needs and continue to meet your requirements as your organization grows.

Check security features

Ensure that the tool provides robust security for your test cases, and test data and complies with relevant security standards and regulations.

Evaluate cost and ROI

Determine if the tool offers the best value for money relative to your needs and budget. Make sure it doesn’t impose unnecessary costs or overhead.

Consider the learning curve and support

Assess the tool’s ease of use and the support quality provided, including training your team members and customer service, to ensure a smooth adoption process.

Addressing our challenges 🧐

Let's go back to the challenges mentioned earlier in this blog post. I'll mention now the processes that worked with my teams.

Challenge 1: Inconsistent writing styles

For inconsistent writing styles, it’s important to select a template that aligns with our process carefully. It needs to clearly define which fields are mandatory and which are optional to streamline and expedite test case creation. Additionally, establishing a clear and straightforward syntax for test cases is crucial. This ensures that when someone reviews a test case created by another team member, it is easily comprehensible.

It's important to acknowledge that agreeing on a standardized syntax can be challenging, especially when team members are used to different practices and may feel defensive about their methods. However, this process should be seen as objective and necessary. As developers adhere to a unified coding standard to ensure clarity and consistency across the codebase, adopting a standardized approach for test cases will enhance overall efficiency and coherence within the team.

This is where test management tools that allow templates and fields' customization become invaluable, enabling you to create different configurations based on project needs.

Challenge 2:  Frequent product changes

To overcome the problems caused by frequent product changes, consider the following points:

Organize Test Cases into Logical Test Suites

Start by structuring your test cases into well-organized test suites based on functionality, modules, or features. This approach facilitates quick identification and updating of relevant test cases. Consider organizing test suites into subfolders for specific groups of tests, such as:

• 🗂️ Core functionality
• 🗂️ Validations & Error handling
• 🗂️ Performance
• 🗂️ UI & Design validation
• 🗂️ Content validation

This structure will help you understand and manage test cases more effectively, as each subfolder provides a clear context about its contents.

Prioritize test suites and test cases

Set priorities for your test suites and individual test cases based on factors such as business impact, risk level, and frequency of use. Use labels, tags, or custom fields to categorize and prioritize test cases. This practice improves test execution efficiency and simplifies progress tracking for stakeholders.

Implement regular review cycles

Another best practice is to set up regular intervals for reviewing your test cases. This ensures you can identify and address outdated or obsolete test cases before they become problematic. Regular reviews help maintain the relevance and accuracy of your test cases and minimize the need for extensive updates later.

Use reusable test steps

Use test management tools that support reusable test steps. This feature accelerates test case creation and reduces redundancy by allowing you to define common steps that can be used across multiple test cases. This not only saves time but also ensures consistency in testing procedures.

Use test suites across projects

Create and maintain separate test suites for common test cases that are applicable across different projects or features.

For example, if your organization uses a design system with specific acceptance criteria for UI components (buttons, text inputs, etc.), you can maintain a master UI test suite. Reuse these test cases for new features by copying them into relevant feature test suites or referencing them in test plans. This approach significantly reduces duplication of effort and ensures comprehensive coverage.

Challenge 3: Lack of archives

To address the third challenge of “Lack of archives,” the following strategies have worked for my teams:

Use version control for test cases

For each project in the test management tool, I created another project called ${project_name} Archive.

The main project includes all up-to-date test cases linked to their corresponding requirements. The archive project is a clone where a folder is created with each new release including all test cases added/updated in this version linked to their version of requirements (copy & paste across projects will be your life saver here 😉😉 ). 

So, whenever you need to go back to old testcases related to specific features, you can easily navigate them in the Archive project.

Maintain clear documentation and change logs

In the main projects containing the current test cases, it is crucial to provide comprehensive descriptions for each test suite and its subfolders. This ensures clarity regarding the context of related test cases, and the timeline of their introduction or modification, and facilitates easy reference to pertinent URLs whether they link to requirements, design documents, or the most recent test cases associated with this section in the archive. This kind of documentation fosters better collaboration and understanding among team members, ultimately contributing to more effective quality assurance practices.

Easing the burden: How to Make Test Case Writing Efficient and Enjoyable?

If you're facing issues with your team's mindset about writing test cases, changing their mindset requires a strategic approach.

Show the value

Help your team understand how organized and well-written test cases contribute to the overall quality of the product. Use real-life examples to show where good test cases made testing more efficient.

Simplify the process

Use templates

Provide simple, standardized templates for test cases to make the writing process fast and more consistent. This reduces the cognitive load on your team and speeds up documentation.

Adopt checklists

For less critical scenarios, encourage the use of checklists instead of fully detailed test cases. This still provides coverage without requiring extensive writing.

Align with the team's interests

If your team prefers exploratory testing, show how documenting their exploratory testing sessions can be turned into useful test cases. This way, documentation becomes a natural extension of what they already enjoy doing.

Automate when possible

If you can afford to use tools that can automate part of the documentation process, like generating test steps from recorded actions or auto-filling templates. This can save significant time.

Also, encourage using reusable test steps for common actions, reducing redundancy and speeding up the process.

Promote a Collaborative Culture

Pair Writing Sessions:
Encourage team members to write test cases in pairs or small groups. This collaboration can make the task more engaging and less daunting.

Encourage Feedback and Sharing:
Create an environment where team members can share and review each other's test cases. Constructive feedback can improve the quality and efficiency of test case writing.

By implementing these strategies, you can shift your team's mindset and make writing test cases more efficient, less time-consuming, and even a bit more enjoyable.

Happy Testing! 🐞🐞