Development of Test Cases
A Test Case is a sequence of actions that describes a set of steps, the specific requirements, and parameters that are necessary to verify the implementation of the tested function or function feature.
Test Cases are usually created immediately after the development of a common test plan, even before the software is written. However, if the necessary documentation is absent, or if the testing stage is being performed by a separate team that was not involved in earlier stages of the software lifecycle, Test Cases can also be prepared during testing.
Test Cases should contain the following information:
- a unique name, which describes the function being tested. It is also necessary to link a test case to the specific system requirement it covers;
- general description (summary);
- preconditions (system state in order to be able to perform the test case);
- the steps of a test case;
- the expected result (which can be single, for a whole Test Case, or multiple, separate expected results for each step).
Some aspects that are needed in order to write good test cases are as follows:
- each test case should be independent, the test cases should not have links to other test cases;
- step into the test cases should uniquely identify the action and the result of this action;
- each test case should verify only one functionality;
- the purpose of each test case is to run the test in the simplest possible way.
