'Test Scenarios' as a term

[Paul French]

Morning All,

Wondering how people interpret (or use) the term ‘test scenarios’ in their business at the moment?
For me, it’s been a way of defining at a high level and in “business terms” the ‘thing’ you want to test. However, is there a difference between test scenario and “use case”?

[Alin]

Hi Paul,

I find the term “use case” more related to business and architecture level where specifications are describing what the product should do and how should its features work.

The concept of “test scenario” is describing the end to end workflow from the use case including additional information regarding environments, data types etc.

Example: after registration, the user is automatically logged in and a welcome message containing the “how to get started” guide should be displayed; this might be a use case. Registration process could be done in different ways: directly in the application or via a partner system (like using a Facebook account). Furthermore, the product may handle different types of users having various rights; there could be normal users, premium users, admin users etc. The workflow must also be tested on different browsers. So any type of registration and user running on browsers can be taken into consideration for defining test scenarios. A test scenario will describe step by step the workflow including the selected browser (e.g. Google Chrome), the registration type (e.g. registration form in the app), the user type (e.g. normal user) and the message that will be displayed accordingly when the registration process is completed.

For me, the difference between these 2 terms is a bit theoretical. In practice, on daily testing activities there isn’t a big difference when using one or the other term.

Regards,
Alin

[Divina]

Test Case: A test case is a set of conditions or variables under which a tester will determine whether an application, software system or one of its features is working as it was originally established for it to do.

Test Scenario: The exhaustive testing is not possible due to large number of data combinations and large number of possible paths in the software. Scenario testing is to make sure that end to end functionality of application under test is working as expected. Also check if the all business flows are working as expected. In scenario testing tester need to put his/her foot in the end users shoes to check and perform the action as how they are using application under test. In scenario testing the preparation of scenarios would be the most important part, to prepare the scenario tester needs to consult or take help from the client, stakeholder or developers.
I hope this will helps you..
Thanks..(Software Testing Training)

[Archana]

Use case document will tell the developer what is the flow of the application. Considering the same registration example, there will be a main flow, where the user comes and registers himself. And there will be alternate flows like user enters a wrong email address or user does not enter all the necessary information or he clicks on some link on the page and so on.

The test scenarios are derived from the use case itself, which covers the flows to be tested. So, in this case, few of the scenarios could be – User successfully completes registration,  User clicks on Already a member link, User enters already existing email address while registration and so on

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