How do you prioritize test cases for efficient testing?

Software testing is an important step in the deployment process. It verifies end-to-end flow, non-functional requirements, and compliance rules before deploying to the production environment. Despite being critical, due to time limitations and resources, quality assurance engineers have to face many challenges when it comes to software testing. Therefore, testers must use various strategies to make the testing process more efficient. One such strategy is test case prioritization.

What is Test Case Prioritization?

Test case prioritization is the process of ranking test cases in a specific order based on criteria specific to each project. The objective of test case prioritization is to execute the most valuable or critical test cases to handle time or budget constraints. Test case prioritization is really important if there are tight deadlines, regression tests, and resource constraints.

Factors to Consider When Prioritizing Test Cases

1. Critical features: There can be some critical areas in a software application where failure can lead to critical issues. For example, in an e-commerce application, login/sign-up and ordering processes are critical. Therefore, QA engineers should prioritize test cases related to those critical functionalities.
2. Risk assessment: When prioritizing test cases, it is crucial to consider areas with frequent changes that will have higher risks. By focusing on high-risk areas, QA engineers can focus more on fail scenarios.
3. Frequency of use: Areas that the end users use the most should be prioritized. For example, in an e-commerce application, search bars, cart functionality, and checkout functionality are widely used. Therefore, test cases related to those areas should be prioritized.
4. Defect history: Features with a history of recurring defects are more likely to get more issues. Therefore, based on the defect history, testers can prioritize test cases.

Methods to Prioritize Test Cases

There are test case prioritization techniques you can follow:

1. Risk-Based Prioritization

Risk-based prioritization focuses on testing the areas which have the highest risk. For example, in an e-commerce application, a payment gateway is considered a high-risk feature due to its complexity and business impact. Test cases validating payment flows should be prioritized above those for less critical features like profile image settings.

Furthermore, testers can categorize test cases into high, medium, and low risk levels, start with test cases associated with high-risk components, and progress to medium- and low-risk areas.

2. Customer-Centric Prioritization

Customer-centric prioritization focuses more on features that directly affect the user experience. Features that are critical to customer satisfaction are tested early. In an e-commerce application, features like search for products, add to cart, and login are more critical than the other features. In customer-centric prioritization, those test cases related to those features are prioritized.

3. Time-Based Prioritization

Time-based prioritization can be implemented when there are tight deadlines or when testing resources are limited. It focuses on test cases that are time-sensitive. For example, patch fixes can be tested using this method.

4. Change-Based Prioritization

Change-based prioritization focuses on testing areas based on new changes (change requirements). For example, if the business user raises a new CR after the development is finished, test cases should be written to prioritize the change, not the entire flow.

Tools and Techniques for Effective Prioritization

Test case management Tools like JIRA, TestRail, or Zephyr can be used to organize and prioritize test cases.

• Code Coverage Tools tools like JaCoCo or SonarQube can be used to focus on untested code blocks.
• Automation Scripts can be used to automate lower-priority or repetitive test cases to save time for critical ones.

Benefits of Test Case Prioritization

Here are some common benefits of test case prioritization:

• Uncover high-impact defects early in the testing cycle.
• Provides quicker insights to developers for critical issues.
• Ensures that high-priority areas are tested thoroughly.
• Reduces the likelihood of critical failures in production.
• Supports Agile and CI/CD.
• Saves cost by preventing defects from slipping into later stages.

Best Practices for Prioritizing Test Cases

• Work with all the stakeholders and get input on test case prioritization.
• Regularly monitor and adjust test cases based on feedback and testing progress.
• Document the prioritization process.
• Introduce automated testing to cover repetitive and low-risk tasks.

Conclusion

Test case prioritization is an important aspect of software testing. By focusing on critical functionalities, high-risk areas, and user-impacting features, prioritization will reduce the number of critical bugs in production. Also, it is important to select the appropriate test case prioritization method based on the nature of your project. By adapting best practices, the QA team can deliver efficient testing without compromising on quality or deadlines.