The Role of the Test Cases

Pivotal to all this testing activity are the test cases. The creation and execution of the test cases themselves constitute the bulk of the testing activity, and the quality and thoroughness with which they are designed and executed determine the quality of the final result.

• Test cases form the foundation on which to design and develop test procedures.

• The "depth" of the testing is proportional to the number of test cases.

• The scale of the test effort is proportional to the number of test cases.

• Test design and development, and the resources needed, are largely governed by the required test cases.

The use cases created during the inception, elaboration, and construction phases of the project serve directly as the input to this process, and since the bulk of the testing workload lies in defining and implementing the test cases, this is where we get the "bang for the buck" from our use-case approach.