A large number of companies in the tech industry have either fully adapted to the agile and DevOps environment, or have taken some of their aspects to improve their business processes and operations – and for good reason. The promise of enhancing the quality of the software product while reducing the release cycles and time to market is strong to resist. However, in a quest to fully adapt to all aspects and features of agile and DevOps methodologies, the testing strategy which is a main component of the traditional waterfall methodology often gets neglected. While agile driven practices have proved to be beneficial for the companies in more ways than one, it is also inarguable that a weak testing strategy can be detrimental to the quality of the end product.

Test Case Management 101

Test case are usually some form of templates that have a specific format which includes small, concise tasks or user interaction stories. They are mostly used by the developers to not only gain an understanding about the user expectation but to work around and manage them as well. The seemingly simple and easy test case management becomes a chore for teams in agile driven organizations. As the scope of the projects become more complicated and their size grows rapidly, the number and complexity of the test cases grow as well and often becomes unmanageable. Hence, a proficient test case management software is necessitated to monitor and track all test cases while keeping the complexity in check.  

How Test Case Management Reduces the Frequency and Severity of Defects

An effective test case management software creates a central repository for the test that is accessible by all relevant teams which bridges the gap between teams. Through the shared knowledge and a common language that is established, the communication between teams and the collaboration efforts are noticeably enhanced. This also allows all members to tracks test cases and their status in real time which in turn saves a lot of time. With the right test management system at their disposal, companies can properly manage and organize their test case and issues. All cases are classified with specific ids or tags through the team members can monitor and track them, and also in case of an issue occurs, it can be traced back to the relevant test case. During the software development process, the requirements and functionalities of the application are analyzed through test case management tools. This tools also enables the quality assurance teams to find defects as early as possible in the development phases so that they can be resolved without any complications. The earlier the bugs and defects in the system are detected, the less costly it is to resolve them, and they can also be prevented from snowballing into unmanageable problems at later stages.