Understanding Test Suite & Test Case: Examples and Best Practices

What is a test suite?

A test suite is a collection of various test cases that are intended to test a behavior or set of behaviors of software application or system. Grouping tests into test suites helps in managing, executing, and reporting the test results efficiently.

Effectively acting as a container for these test cases, the suite showcases precise details and objectives for each individual test case. Furthermore, it includes vital information regarding the system configuration necessary for the testing process. What sets it apart is its utilization of distinct stages to denote the ongoing test execution status—ranging from Active and In-progress to Completed.

For a product purchase scenario, a well-structured test suite may encompass an array of crucial test cases, seamlessly contributing to the overall validation process:

• Test Case 1: Login.
• Test Case 2: Adding Products.
• Test Case 3: Checkout.
• Test Case 4: Logout.

There might be some instances when they are used to collect relevant test cases. Depending on the system, it may be for all of the system's functionality or a smoke test suite that includes smoke tests. Additionally, it may consist of all tests and indicate if a test should be used as a smoke test or for a particular functionality.

As depicted in image below, a test plan is segregated into test suites, which may be further segmented based on number of test cases.

Characteristics of a test suite

It provide several benefits for the testing team and the organization. Some of the essential characteristics are:

• They are developed after a test plan.
• There are several tests and test cases included in it.
• It explains the aims and objectives of the test cases.
• Test parameters like application, environment, version, and others are incorporated in it.
• These can be created based on the test cycle and scope.
• It includes several kinds of testing, including functional testing and non-functional testing.
• It offers a way to test and evaluate the applications quickly.
• It may be used with many automation testing tools, including JUnit and Selenium.

Types of Test suites

These are divided into two categories with unique functions, i.e.,

• Abstract test suite: It is a component of model-based testing, and it comprises a group of abstract test cases drawn from a high-level model of the system under test. The software team cannot use these directly since they are always at a high-level and do not provide specific information about the software application and test environment.
• Executable test suite: It is developed from abstract test cases, which is executable. It offers the basic, low-level details needed to run a application. It operates at a granular level and effectively interacts with the application under test.

What type of tests make test suites useful?

The primary aim is to identify the gaps in a test so that one test case must be successfully completed before you start the next test case.

If one test case fails during sequential mode, you can stop the test case execution for entire suite. If the expected result of one test case relies on the results of other test cases, stopping the test execution might be helpful. Therefore, it is essential to look at what tests are useful for it.

• Build verification tests: A set of test cases that carry out a basic validation of the majority of the software application's functional areas. The tests are run after each application is built and before the build is made publicly available.
• Regression tests: A set of test cases used to perform regression testing of application functional areas.
• Smoke tests: A group of test cases that ensure the basic functionality of a software application. Smoke tests are the initial level of testing that is carried out after changes have been made to the system under test.
• Functional tests: A group of test cases that verifies the particular functionality of a software application. It checks the functionality of different aspects of each specific application's feature.
• End-to-end integration tests: It ensures that integration points between products are exercised and validated across software application boundaries.

Requirements of good template

It plays a crucial role in software development life cycle (SDLC). Therefore, software testers must use a standardized predefined template to create them and specify their various aspects covered below:

• Summary: It includes a detailed summary and to make it more comprehensive, it contain different categories of test suites.
• Design: The design section provides information on it's design and several recommendations to improve the test coverage.
• Formal review: After the summary and design have been specified, the team conducts a formal review that helps businesses bring their operations into compliance with industry norms and rules.
• Precondition and postcondition: These specify and validate the conditions that must be met before and after it is run.
• Expected results: The team outlines the success criteria for a test suite. To further test the effectiveness, these expected results are compared with the actual result.
• Risk analysis: The team identifies all the possible risk failures that might affect the testing process and prevent the team from achieving the expected results.
• Test cases: This template section consists of test cases and their respective test environments. The team will run these test cases to verify different aspects of the application under test.
• Document and reports: This section contains reports and documents such as screenshots, reports, execution records, and other relevant information.

Differences: Test plan Vs Test scenario Vs Test case Vs Test suite

Software testers often get confused with the terms like test suite, test cases, test scenario, test plan. Now, we will look at their differences.

Why does using a right test suite matter?

Software development needs a balance between speed and quality. The leverage point of software applications varies depending on the type of software applications. The two types of software applications now-a-days are web and enterprise applications. Therefore, you select the right test suite to make your testing more effective. Following are the points to explain why it matters to your business:

• Testing web and enterprise software applications: Web services are typically dynamic, with scope and requirements constantly changing. Depending on the production metrics and customer feedback, many features are added and removed.
  Web architecture should be flexible, and end-to-end testing can be used to achieve maximum flexibility. End-to-end testing can be reliable and consistent only if it is focused on the unchanging elements of the module rather than referencing the Document Object Model (DOM) elements.
  Generally, waterfall models are used in enterprise and desktop software environments, where larger scopes of development, fewer frequent changes, more stable and reliable architectures are preferred.
  A large upfront design can be effective if the requirements are clear. For example, in case of a considerable redesign with no new features. Enterprise software developers, especially Java developers, typically prefer unit tests.
• Benefit of fast tests: The performance of an application can have a direct impact on developer productivity. This is why performance is essential in testing. Having a short feedback loop is super important and makes your life easier. It enables you to test quickly and adjust while the costs are low.
• Advantage of broad tests: Broad tests like end-to-end tests is helpful as they give confidence in your test code. Confidence in testing means that the results are very similar to what will happen in the actual user scenario once the software application is built.

Best practices to make a good test suite

A good test suite doesn't take a long to execute. It ensures your software application works as intended. If it encounters a bug, it will automatically return feedback to help you identify the bug's source and help you fix it. Following are the properties which makes a test suite good fit to use for software developers:

• Fast: If a test suite includes an extensive collection of integration tests and a few unit tests, it can take much longer to execute it, whereas a fast one will give feedback more quickly and make your development process even more efficient.
• Complete: If your test suite covers 100% of your codebase, it will identify any errors arising from tweaks to your code application. Therefore, a complete test suite gives you confidence that your software applications are working fine as intended.
  
• Reliable: It provides consistent feedback, irrespective of changes that can occur outside the test scope, whereas an unreliable one can have tests that fail intermittently, with no valuable feedback about changes you've done to your application.
• Isolated: It runs test cases without hampering other tests in the suite. However, you may require cleaning up existing test data after running a test case in your suite.
• Maintainable: A maintainable test suite that is organized is easy to manipulate. You easily add, change, or remove test cases. To maintain your test suite, you can follow best coding practices and develop a uniform process that suits you and your team.
• Expressive: If your test suites are easy-to-read, they can be good for documentation. Always write test scripts that are descriptive of the features you are testing. Also, try to create a descriptive and understandable for a developer to read.

Best practices to follow to create a good test suite:

• Picking up correct programming language and frameworks: Software application is created using a variety of programming languages, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.
  The developer's experience should be considered when selecting a programming language to create an automated test suite. For instance, Python is a language of choice for developers.
  Depending on the fact that your team likes to use Python, you may also need to learn Python for this. Selecting a language that a development team is comfortable with will give you access to tutors right away who can assist you with some complex application problems.
  Select a language for your test framework that corresponds to the languages used for the software application of your organization.
  Although you may not feel personally as comfortable, you may benefit from your coworkers' programming knowledge and experience. When selecting a programming language, keep in mind the operations your test suite must do, and the documentation and support offered.
• Necessary skills: You should start creating your test suite as soon as you have enough knowledge of programming languages and tools to choose one that best suits your requirements.
• Developer tools: They are still important when creating and playing with code. Following questions can be asked when using developer tools:
• Which are the best IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) to use?
• Which version control system (SVN or Git) should be employed?
• Which CI/CD tool does your organization wish to use?
• Scalability: It should be designed with scalability in mind. You could be unfamiliar with concepts like page objects, regular expressions, and DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) coding techniques. But knowing them is beneficial, especially when creating an automated test suite.

Once you've incorporated all the best practices and created your test suites, you should perform automated browser testing across real browsers, devices, and operating systems. Since device fragmentation is a challenge for every developer and tester, you must ensure the software applications are working correctly across every latest and legacy test configuration.

Continuous quality testing platforms like LambdaTest enable you to instantly perform manual and automated testing of your web and mobile applications across 3000+ real browsers, devices, and operating systems combinations. Whether you are stuck with sluggish test execution or struggling with in-house test infrastructure, the LambdaTest cloud testing platform has got you covered.

You can also subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube Channel and stay updated with the latest tutorials around Selenium automation testing, Cypress testing, Playwright testing, CI/CD tools, and more.

Here is a quick rundown of the features offered by the LambdaTest platform.

• End-to-end testing for web and mobile apps on a scalable and secure cloud grid.
• Support test automation frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, TestCafe, Puppeteer, Taiko, automation testing Playwright, Appium, Espresso, and XCUITest.
• HyperExecute and Test At Scale for accelerating your test automation.
• Live-interactive testing for websites and mobile apps.
• Unblock your QA teams with instant access to online emulators and simulators and a real device cloud.
• Integrations with 120+ tools for CI/CD, project management, codeless automation, accessibility testing, bug tracking, and more.

How to maintain an automated test suite?

There are several ways to maintain automated test suites. You may want to automate your test suites to make testing easier. However, just because you've automated your test suites doesn't mean that testing will be simpler. In fact, it can make maintaining your test suite hard.

Follow these simple guidelines for easier maintenance of your automated test suites:

• Make a test suite plan: Without a proper strategy, automated testing raises the likelihood that it will be unproductive. The definition of a test automation strategy is a crucial component of any test plan. Explain how you want to maintain your test assets in your strategy to the development team. It is indeed possible that most of the development team is unaware of your plans for maintaining your tests.
  Additionally, it is a good idea to convey to the rest of the development team that this maintenance can be a significant portion of the development effort.
• Keep your test suites clean: As with the application being tested, your test assets will evolve. Therefore, the application requirements will also vary according to the system's requirements. Keeping your automated test suites up-to-date is also vital, requiring checking test materials regularly. Each time a new software application update is released, validity checks should be performed as soon as possible.
  Maintaining the relevance of your test suites is necessary. Assume that some tests in your test suites will become invalid due to software changes. Get rid of these test assets when they have been identified. This will significantly reduce your load. Several automated testing tools simplify this task, including methods for packaging outdated or invalid tests .
• Handle your test assets like other software applications: Software applications require maintenance. This also holds for the software testing suite. Whether recorded or coded, test cases and the test scripts that go with them should be kept up to date. The assets in your automated test suites also need various types of maintenance, such as corrective, preventive, or adaptive, just as the software does.
  Identify your test plans for corrective maintenance (such as fixing syntax problems in your scripts), preventive maintenance (such as writing generic test scripts wherever feasible), and adaptive maintenance as you update your automated test suites. This may be included in your test plan.
• Centralized your test assets: Locate your test assets in a repository that the development team can access to make it easier to maintain your automated test suites. You can use different test management tools to organize your test assets (test cases, test scripts, and test suites) in a single repository.
• Improve testability with collaboration: To improve the testability of your automated test suites, you can use them to communicate test decisions to the developers. For continuous perfective maintenance of your test suites, handle them like assets that belong to the development team rather than just the testing team.