12 things to remember for writing effective test cases

The testing phase is equally as important as the development phase in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Testing ensures that the software, in parts or in its entirety, is ready for the end user. A finished application may not function as intended for all inputs, or it might deviate from its normal behavior. The primary purpose of writing test cases is to ensure complete coverage of all the potential errors that could arise from real-world usage.

A skilled tester not only has a good understanding of the various testing types, but is knowledgeable enough to identify all the scenarios where the software might fail to function as conceived. Once the errors are identified during testing, the development team works on addressing the errors by making changes to the codebase. This cycle of testing and tweaking the code based on the results of testing helps in alleviating anomalies from the expected behavior of the application.

Why do test cases matter?

Be it manual or automated, irrespective of their experience level, testers agree that writing good test cases is critical. Software developers add new features by writing lines of code, but the software may not perform as intended in the hands of the end user. That's why the QA team designs test cases to uncover potential bugs that could affect different aspects of the software—and why writing efficient test cases is pivotal to ensuring that a software project is a success.

Testing projects often don't go as planned, since the severity and priority of the bugs encountered can't always be predicted in advance. Bugs can either be identified in the production environment or the testing environment. In the case of the former, the QA team tries to recreate the bug and the related defects during testing. In the latter environment, the QA team writes test cases for maximum coverage of potential bugs. In both scenarios, the team shares the test results with the development team to work on a fix.

Important things to remember while writing test cases

Test case creation plays a vital role in software testing projects. Test cases are envisioned for optimal coverage of bugs that might arise in the production phase. Incorporating the following into your test cases can ensure effective testing:

• Role-based user personas - The idea behind creating different user personas is to ensure that the software is tested for usage based on diverse user types. Spending time on creating personas is helpful to look at the software from different perspectives, instead of creating generic test cases that might not cover all the potential bugs.
• Optimal coverage - The goal of creating test cases should be to achieve maximum coverage of bugs in the initial phase of testing. Addressing the same bug in the production phase is stressful and time sensitive, compared to when it's discovered and handled early on.
• Relevant title - Test case titles need to be succinct and express the purpose of the test case clearly to fellow testers, who might refer to or run them much later. Proper titles also help in easily grouping the test cases when testing.
• Insightful description - The description for the test case should convey the exact purpose of the test case in detail. With a good description, anyone looking at the test case can derive how the software should work based on the input provided and the expected output.
• Inclusion of edge cases - Edge cases are rare software bugs that can arise in the production phase, and are usually not covered in general test cases. Although not common, these errors can lead to serious issues for end users.
• Enabling compatibility - Writing test cases for testing cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility ensures that the software performs as intended everywhere. Therefore, choosing the right testing platform, with the capability to test on various platforms and devices, is important for the testing phase of any project.
• Averting test flakiness - Test flakiness implies that the software being tested produces different results when tested in succession, despite no changes to the code. Writing well thought out test cases pertaining to different environments, coupled with automation, can greatly reduce the chance of test flakiness creeping in.
• Organizing code - Grouping test cases by functionalities helps in easily accessing the related test cases during testing. Neatly cataloged test case modules can be executed together for more efficient functionality testing.
• Improved readability - Test cases need to be precise, with necessary comments for important lines of code, clearly explaining the input and the expected output. This helps with test case usability.
• Fostering posterity - While creating test cases, necessary care needs to be taken to ensure that any addition or modification can be accommodated easily. Using existing test cases can save QA teams a lot of time, as compared to creating test cases from scratch.
• Need-based creation - Since automation is performed on a test case—or a cluster of them—multiple times in succession, most test cases are similar, except for minor changes. Test cases written as part of manual testing may not be as accurate as automated test cases, but these are used for flexibility in short term projects.
• Incorporating reusability - Instead of repeating blocks of code across multiple test cases, it's wise to maintain the repeated part as a separate test case module, which can be referenced later inside individual test cases. This referencing of modules across test cases can potentially reduce the number of lines of code, and also help in easy management of test cases.

Test case management in Zoho QEngine

Zoho QEngine offers QA teams granular control over test case management for handling the testing phase with ease. Any user can create test cases for various testing platforms in a single window using the built-in actions. The low-code builder mode also offers easy test-case creation, using predefined syntax for most actions.

The results dashboard gives a unified overview of the all the test executions across platforms. Each test result can then be analyzed further to make changes to the existing cases or to create new test cases based on the results. Scheduling the automation of test cases can further help in testing beyond the limitations of manual testing.

User access control in Zoho QEngine empowers managers and admins to grant permissions to their teams based on their roles. This helps in ensuring that every change to the test cases make their way to production only after approval from the respective manager.