About Test Cases

A test case defines a scenario for validating system requirements. A test case validates one or more requirements contained within the requirements specification that is linked to the test specification.

See Also
Creating Test Cases
Linking and Unlinking Test Cases
Revising Test Cases
Changing the Test Case Maturity Level
In Other Guides
Content Categories

A test case consists a set of input values developed for a particular objective or test condition. For example, a test case can exercise a particular program path or verify compliance with a specific requirement.

You can copy a test case to create a duplicate with identical attributes. This is helpful when you want to run similar tests with test cases that differ only by one or two variables.

You can also link test cases to test scripts and test executions to further define your test procedures and capture the results of the tests. In the following example, test specification TS-New is linked to Test Spec A. TS-New contains four test cases: TC1, TC2, Copy of TC1, and Copy of TC2. Test Spec A contains three test cases: Test Case 01, Test Case 02, and TC1. Test case TC1 is shared between both TS-New and Test Spec A. The Details pane displays the shared test case status in the informational note highlighted in blue.

Note: You can copy and link test cases to test specifications even when the linked requirements are unavailable from the target test specification. In this scenario, Validation and Verification Strategy warns you that the requirements are not found:

In addition, you can revise a test case to create a newer version for testing. Revising a test case retains all requirements and scripts linked to the original test case and all prerequisite dependencies of the original test case. You can Revise (or Revise and Replace) multiple test cases at once. In the figure below, you have multiselected FS Test Case 01 and FS Test Case 02. The toolbar changes to include only allowable actions; in this case, you can change the maturity state, revise, or delete the multiselected test cases.

In the following figure, FS Test Case 01 and FS Test Case 02 are at revision 1 in the tree; however, the revise icon indicates that a higher revision exists (resulting from your Revise action). If, instead, you revised and replaced, the revise icon would be absent and the revision label would show as 2 in the column.

As with the Revise action, you can change the maturity state or delete multiple test cases at once.

Test Cases and Access Levels

Test cases (and all test objects) belong to specific content categories. The category of content, along with your access level, determines what actions you can take on the various types of content.

To create a test case, you must have the Author access role (at a minimum).