In this digitally enabled world, enterprise applications play a crucial role in executing critical business processes. Since business continuity depends on these applications, it is important that these apps showcase robust performance and stability. This can only be achieved by robust software testing. The heart of the software testing is "test suite".

In this blog, you'll explore what a test suite is, why it's essential for successful software delivery, and how it can enhance the overall development process. We'll also highlight how test suites integrate with modern development methodologies like Agile and DevOps.

What is Test Suite?

A test suite consists of test cases, scenarios, scripts, and data. These are grouped together to validate the functionality and performance of an enterprise application. Test suites are basically used to validate the specific functionality and performance of a software application. Test suites are combination of both manual and automated test cases. They are executed to detect defects, bugs, and inconsistencies across the software development lifecycle.

What are Key Components of Test Suites?

A test suite consists of following components:

Test Cases: A test case is defined as specific steps or conditions that are executed to validate a specific feature or functionality of an application.

Test Scenarios: A test scenario is defined as a detailed documentations of test cases, covering the end to end functionality of an application as liner statements. These liner statements are termed as scenarios that contain high-level classification of testable requirements.

Test Data: The inputs and conditions under which the test cases are executed.

Test Scripts: If a test suite includes automation, scripts are used to automate software testing.

What are different Types of Test Suites?

Types of Test Suites are as follows:

Manual Test Suite: Executed manually by testers, a manual test suite doesn't involve usage of test automation tools or test scripts. Here, human judgment and observation play a crucial role in identifying unexpected issues or user experience problems.

Manual test suites are used during exploratory testing where testers wants to explore the application beyond predefined test cases to find unexpected issues.

It is perfect for projects where the overhead of automation is not justified due to the scope or duration of the testing phase. Manual test suites aren't ideal for large regression tests. The reason is that manual testing is time consuming and error prone. Learn more: Manual vs. Automated Testing

Automated Test Suite: Here, test cases are executed leveraging test automation platform. Automated test suite is particularly recommended for testing process that includes repetitive tasks such as regression testing, load testing, and performance testing. These test suites are often integrated into Continuous Integration/ Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to allow for frequent and efficient testing.

Automated tests run much faster than manual tests, enabling rapid feedback. Furthermore, test scripts once created can be reused across multiple test cycles, software versions or test environment. Whenever a new code is committed, automated test suites can be triggered automatically to ensure continuous testing throughout the development cycle.

Regression Test Suite: This test suite is specifically designed to validate previously developed functionality after changes have been deployed. The changes can be new features, enhancements, bug fixes, or system configuration changes. A regression test suite is a part of software maintenance and release cycles in the agile and continuous integration environment.

Regression testing processes focus on validating high-risk areas of the application that are most likely to be impacted by changes. Since this is a repetitive process, it is recommended to use automated testing. Automated testing tools execute repetitive regression tests and reduce the time and effort required for manual testing.

Performance Test Suite: In performance test suites, test cases are designed to validate how well a software application performs under various conditions. Here, test cases are executed to evaluate non-functional aspects of an application - speed, scalability, reliability, and resource usage. The key objective of executing performance test suite is to measure how quickly the application responds to user actions or how many transactions or requests an application can handle within a specific time period.

Integration Test Suite: Here, the test cases are designed with focus on verifying the interactions between different components or modules of a software system. The main objective of integration test suites are to ensure that data flows correctly between modules, or external systems. Integration tests ensure that multiple components work together as expected when combined.

Smoke Test Suite: These are high-level test cases that are designed to verify the core functionality of an application. Smoke test suites ensure that the most critical and essential parts of the software work as expected after a new build or code deployment. The purpose of smoke test execution is to confirm that the software build is stable enough to undergo further, more detailed testing.

Functional Test Suite: The functional tests cases are designed with the focus on ensuring that the software performs as per specified requirements and correctly handles inputs, produces expected outputs.

How to create test suites?

Identify test objective: The QA team needs to define what they want to achieve with the test suite. The testing team needs to define whether they want to validate the functionalities, performance aspects, or integrations.

Select and Design Test Cases: In this, the QA team needs to select those test cases which cover their objective. Each of the test cases should be designed with detailed steps, input data, and expected results. The tests should be independent, reusable, and maintainable.

Organize Test Cases: The test cases should be arranged into logical clusters within the test suite. Test cases needs to be prioritized based on their importance and execution order.

Choose the Right Test Automation Platform: Selecting the right test automation platform is the key to success. Here's why:

• For instance, if you want to execute regression test suites, they are hard to maintain as the collection of test cases keeps on growing. So, always opt for a test automation platform that comes with self-healing capabilities.

• Opkey is one such platform that non only supports in automating test cases but also in test case management.

• If the executable test suite is for integration, always opt for a testing platform that supports multiple technologies.

• Opkey offers end-to-end testing by supporting 12+ ERPs and 150+ technologies including - Oracle Cloud, Oracle EBS, Workday, Coupa, and SAP.

• In this era of agile and devops, vendors rolls out frequent updates to maintain software quality. If tests are executed manually, they will require a lot of time and significant testing effort. Test automation perfectly addresses these challenges.

• Opkey speeds up the testing processes, minimizes testing efforts while ensuring that your software applications are risk-free. Opkey also helps you no-code test creation and test case management for better transparency.