Top 9 Tips to Write Effective Test Cases
A good test case always includes strong title, a good description, list of pre-conditions and expected results. Test cases come with different flavors “Positive and Negative”, but the most important factor is to cover all Business and Functional requirements. Effective test cases add value to the business along with the project.
This blog outlines some of the best tips to write test cases effectively.
- Create test cases from end-user perspective: The ultimate goal of creating test case is to meet customer requirements. If we write test cases keeping user experience in mind, we can avoid the two common mistakes .i.e. ‘missing a bug’ and ‘writing test cases that do not verify real world scenarios’. This gives a complete sense of attainment.
- Domain Knowledge: Domain knowledge is the core of any software application. Business rules may vary as per the domain and can greatly impact business functions. Lack of domain knowledge in testing may result in business loss. Thus, to avoid conflicts between Standards of Domain, a product tester must attain this knowledge before writing test cases.
- Avoid Assumption: Do not assume anything, stick to the Specification Documents. Assuming feature and functionality of software application can create a gap between the Client’s specifications and the product under development, which can also impact the business.
- Relevant Artifacts Attachments: It is always a best practice to attach relevant artifacts to your test cases. It helps in tracking the massive changes in your application at the time of product delivery. Attaching the artifacts or designs to a particular test step helps in understanding the tricky flow which would not be possible to explain with test steps.
- Avoid all Repetitions: Test Automation helps to avoid repetition. It also helps in reducing manual effort and adds value to the product. Test cases should be written such that they can be re-used by any other team for any other project.
- Go in Organized Manner: In general, company manages test cases using spreadsheets which is not a good practice. As the number of test cases increases, it becomes extremely difficult to manage and also the efficiency of team decreases.
There are many software solutions that can help to manage and organize all the test cases in one place. We can use Test Management Tool for test case management. - Coverage must be 100%: Test coverage is a useful method for finding untested parts of an application. To have 100% test coverage, write test cases for all software requirements mentioned in the specification document.
Requirement traceability matrix will trace the functions and conditions that were left untested. - Defined and Easy Understandable: Test cases should be easily understandable and to-the-point. If another Software Test Engineer executes the test cases, he/she should be able to understand it easily.
- Maintenance and Updates: It is always a good practice to update test cases as per the newly introduced changes in the requirements.
It’s of critical to make sure that your existing test cases are always updated as per the new requirements before starting new test cases.
Test cases should be designed in such a way that they are Presentable, Simple and Easily Understandable by everyone. Tester must have good Domain Knowledge and test cases must be written according to End User. Moreover, automation testing helps you to sustain agile and DevOps modes of product engineering. Here is another blog that talks about leveraging Automation Testing for Agile Development.
Hi, thank you for this post I agree with you that The ultimate goal of creating test case is to meet customer requirements. If we write test cases keeping user experience in mind, we can avoid the two common mistakes .i.e. ‘missing a bug’ and ‘writing test cases that do not verify real world scenarios. very useful information