Test Case Management – The Pros and the Cons

Releasing an application into the market after thorough software testing is a tricky process. This is because software testers ensure the quality of the application and its ability to meet business requirements by various testing techniques. Test case management plays an important role in setting objectives, identifying key problem areas and guiding testing teams on how to proceed further during the development phase. Testers use test case management tools to follow a strategic approach towards testing and enhancing quality. Developers are also a part of the testing teams now so that testing at each stage can remove any issues in software before the final product release.

The Pros of Test Case Management

Organizations that require software testing utilize different test management tools. Let’s have a look at how test case management contributes to enhancing quality:

• It enables traceability of test cases (according to specific requirements)
• It manages automated and manual testing
• It manages various test runs for different test cases and scripts
• It helps in setting up a cross-tool traceability matrix
• It incorporates test cases and their respective results

The advanced test management tools can be customized and assist in managing individual test cases in an efficient manner. Traceability allows testers to see details regarding which a test case is based on. It also highlights how bugs reported are linked to these test cases. These tools can be integrated with third-party systems allowing you easy migration of all project details into a new system.

The Cons of Test Case Management

It is difficult to say why exactly development teams should not be using test case management in this fast-growing technological era, but there are pitfalls to all types of testing and test case management tools. Let’s have a look at a few of them:

• Time is of the essence with respect to software delivery in the agile environment. If test case management is not utilized efficiently, it is more likely that the software delivery will be delayed. Time is critical in today’s competitive era, where product deliveries have come down from months to weeks.
•  It is observed that manual test case management tools may affect the efficiency of development teams. This makes the process more complicated.
• Although test case management comes with the advantage of making traceability effective, it gets impossible in certain test case scenarios. It can affect the decision-making process and test case analysis becomes a bit complicated.

Conclusion