Testing ASP.NET Web Applications

7.8. Manual Test Cases

When it comes to manual testing, you need to take into consideration that the tests will need to be run multiple times. The most effective way to support this is to create test cases around the parts of the application which you want to be able to retest on a new build. These test cases are generally run either when that area of the application has changed or just before a release to verify everything is working as you expect. Having the test cases in place means you can quickly run through the cases without having to rethink all the possible combinations and areas of concern. This provides you with a safety net to ensure that everything has been covered correctly.

When writing manual test cases you will notice that they have some similarities to automated test cases. For instance, a manual test case should be targeted to one particular task, feature, or item to check. This is to make them concise and allow you to only run the cases which are actually required at that point in time as speed is an issue. Being manual, they take much longer to run than automated cases which means at times you need to be able to very easily pick and choose which cases are required to be run. The more focused they are, the easier this is to do. However, manual test cases do have the advantage that you are able to test multiple things at the same time because it is a human verifying the results and so can be more flexible. A single test case could verify different parts of the ...