When test cases are not expanded regularly, a test repository can grow large and the test cases may also become obsolete. QA executes a number of test cases, reports them as failed and the product owner will close them, thus wasting time and many resources.

Every QA team has experienced that once in a while. A test case is a written form of a user story, however, a new user story changes the workflow or the functionality and a new test case is written.

If the previous test case is not updated or deleted, QA and developers can feel confused. In order to avoid this, it is important to have the skills for effective test case management in an agile environment.

Using a proactive approach within each sprint of an agile project, the QA team will avoid executing obsolete test cases and avoid logging invalid bugs, thus creating more efficient processes to ensure better test coverage.

It helps QA teams in achieving their testing efforts by streamlining the test cases. They have different test case management tools to support their processes. 

The Issues in Agile Test Case Management 

One of the major mistakes a QA team can make is to collect all the test cases in one place for regression. This happens most of the time, because at the time it may appear there are much more important issues to focus on.

Not only does this add to the obsolete test cases in the regression test suite, but it increases the demands placed on the management of test cases in the near future. 

Most of the time a tester creates the test cases from a user story during a sprint. The test cases are valid and necessary for testing during this sprint, but at the end of the sprint, the test cases will be moved into the place where all the test cases from the previous sprints are added.

The tests keep piling up and when it is time for full regression, the team discovers a large number of test cases, including duplicate test cases and invalid tests.

Typically, there is a small window to execute the full regression and now the team needs to go through all the tests to find out which one to execute.

By executing the wrong test cases testers will end up wasting a lot of time. QA teams will not like a delay in the release because they were not prepared properly to perform regression testing.

How to Manage Agile Test Cases?

There is a simple solution to these issues, it requires a proactive approach, to prevent the team from making efforts to update regression tests at the time of regression.

They need to schedule their time within each sprint to manage the regression test cases. The changes in each user story will fall into one or more of the following four categories in the test case management process:

Add Tests – If a major functionality is introduced, the tests created for the sprint testing should be added to the regression tests. This includes the test to a smoke or sanity test too. Where the test is added will be determined by the importance of a feature or functionality. 

Update Tests – When a workflow is updated but no significant changes are made to the functionality, it is not necessary to create new tests. Simply editing the tests to match the new workflow will be sufficient, and the tests for this functionality in the regression suite. 

Remove Tests – Some user stories just require removing a certain feature that is no longer in use this way also because a provider has been removed and content that was tested and is no longer relevant. 

Do Nothing – User stories simply need to adjust an image, color scheme, or test should have test cases created in sprint testing. These should not be added to the regression.

They are valid tests and need to be executed each time the software is deployed to a new environment, but even after that, they should be set aside.

The elements that change frequently are most likely to be touched unless another user story is created, are not useful in regression testing or smoke testing.

In such cases, after the sprint is completed and the change is in production, it is preferable to leave these tests in the sprint folder for historical purposes. All these are important components of a test management process, which can be followed in agile projects. 

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