The purpose of a good test case?

There are several objectives of any effective test whether manually executed or automated. The rationale for test case usually falls into one of seven categories. Each category provides value to the organization in different ways, but they all essentially function to reduce risk and qualify the testing effort. So, a good test provides some measurable value to the organization with the explicit purpose of:

• Verifying conformance to applicable standards and guidelines and customer requirements


• Validating expectations and customer needs


• Increasing control flow coverage


• Increasing logic flow coverage


• Increasing data flow coverage


• Simulating 'real' end user scenarios


• Exposing errors or defects