QA glossary
What is a test suite?
A test suite is a group of test cases that are run together to check one area of a product or one kind of risk. Teams build suites so they can run the right set of checks at the right time, such as a short suite for every build and a full suite before release.
An example from QA practice
An online shop has about 400 test cases. The team groups them into three suites. A smoke suite of 15 cases checks that the site loads, search works and a basket can be paid for, and it runs on every build. A regression suite covers every existing feature and runs each night. A release suite adds the payment and tax cases and runs before each deployment. The same test cases can sit in more than one suite.
What makes a good suite
- One purpose: a suite answers one question, such as "is this build worth testing further?" or "did the release break anything old?"
- A known run time: a suite that takes six hours stops being run, so split it.
- Independent cases: each case sets up its own data, so the suite gives the same result in any order.
- An owner: someone removes cases that no longer match the product.
Suite versus plan
A test suite is the set of tests. A test plan is the document that says what will be tested, by whom and when. A plan usually names the suites it will use.
How BetterQA does it
BugBoard stores test cases in suites and keeps the run history of each one, and it can analyse a suite for missing cases such as edge cases and error states. Flows runs automated suites in a browser and sends step-by-step results back to BugBoard, so the people reading a failed run see what happened without opening the tool.
Related terms
Which checks belong in the suite that runs on every build.