ou’ve likely landed here because you are either new to testing tools or are unhappy with the testing platform you’re currently using.

We understand that’s a frustrating spot to be in. You need to run tests now but you’re stuck having to figure out what tool to use first.

If you’re knee-deep wading through research on tools and keep running into questions like—“What even is test case management?”, or, “How would I know what is the best test case management tool for my team?”, or even “but they have way more features than I need”—we think your answers lie in understanding your two main options: traditional test case management (TCM) vs more modern, agile tools.

What Do We Mean By “Traditional Test Case Management”

You'll find we refer a lot not just to 'test case management' but often more specifically to 'traditional test case management’, so it’s worth defining what that means.

We see traditional TCM as tools that are built around the concept of a "Test Case" - they help you create, organize, execute and track test plans by building and managing collections of Test Cases stored in a database. You might even think of these tools as being database-centric.

"Test Cases" are formal test instructions consisting of several parts, usually including Title, Environment, Steps to execute, Expected outcomes, and other metadata (like project, components, priority, and so on).

Typically test cases are created and edited one at a time. You’d click on a new test case, fill in the form fields for each section, then click on save, etc. (This is a relevant distinction when we explain nontraditional options later).

Traditional TCMs are often used by enterprise companies and large QA teams with demanding process controls. The formulaic testing structure can be a preferred choice for teams with managerial oversight and tight standard operating procedures. The complexity of many traditional TCM software tools arises from the level of controls that bigger companies want to apply to managing huge teams, across multiple departments, and dozens to hundreds of projects.

Traditional TCMs would be names you might be familiar with if you shopped around for testing software — TestRail, Zephyr, Practitest, etc. Most of the popular TCM’s would be considered traditional in the sense that they are heavyweight software tools - that plan testing based around the database-centric management of test cases.

So what would be a more modern alternative?

Anything that's not "test case' based could be considered a more agile, alternative option.

Notepads and spreadsheets would count, and indeed, are useful places to get started, simply for building a list of things to remember to test, without the burden of having to format those tests according to some process. However, we wouldn’t define spreadsheets or notepads as modern or agile.

In terms of professional tools, the only one we're aware of is our own, Testpad, which was built precisely because of the lack of pragmatic lightweight tooling for simple test case management.

Testpad: A Pragmatic Alternative

Testpad is built around the idea of checklists (documents we call "scripts" or "test scripts", and as such, could be thought of as a document-centric approach contrasting the database-centric approach of traditional TCM.

Freeform checklists, along with some outlining structure (think hierarchies formed from indentation), make it very easy to structure test plans in a lightweight and flexible way.

You could write them out so they look like test Cases, but there's no need to. Often it's faster and more useful to just prompt testers with features, ideas, or user-stories, to review.

This makes it ideal for more exploratory style test processes, where you want some kind of plan for what you're doing, but don't want to overly prescribe exactly what the testers have to do.

This testing setup is simply intuitive. There's no training needed for what exactly a test case is or what it should or shouldn't have - it's just obvious how to write a list (a checklist) of things you want to remember during testing and then executing on that list.

Traditional TCM, A Pragmatic Alternative, Or Both?

There are plenty of people who find that staying with a traditional tool makes sense for them. Some teams should (and do) go for both a traditional and a modern alternative - augmenting their tool set with an agile/exploratory tool while keeping their TCM for due diligence.

However, we have a feeling that most of our readers fall into one of two camps:

• Teams that are in a mess with spreadsheets thinking there must be a better way, but not impressed with the complexity and constraining rigor of traditional TCM tools.
• Teams that are used to TCM wondering if there's something lightweight, more agile and modern, especially those trying to be more exploratory (less prescriptive) in their testing; or just tired of maintaining test cases one edit-form at a time.

That leaves these two camps in a bit of a bind: what they’re currently doing or using isn’t working and they need to find a solution that works.

So, which to choose?

If you're in a mess with spreadsheets, the obvious path is to try the easy upgrade to a tool like Testpad.

If you're unhappy with your TCM tools in general, then try running a project with a lightweight alternative. Or review the needs of your current projects and see if having both kinds of tools available would be a good fit.

Changing the Way You Test With an Agile Alternative TCM

Traditional TCM can be like using Gantt Charts from the 1990s vs modern tools like Trello, Notion, Basecamp.

You likely ditched Gantt charts in the ‘90s, so it begs the question: why are you still using traditional TCMs?

They can be a cumbersome and an ineffective approach to the ultimate goal of testing: learning as much about the state of your software in as little time as possible.

Testpad enables a pragmatic approach to testing that allows you to stay dynamic and iterative in the testing process.

If Testpad sounds like the simple modern test planning tool you've always been looking for, you can sign up for a free trial of Testpad for 30 days risk-free without handing over your credit card number. If you love using Testpad (and we hope you do!) we offer several tiered pricing plans to suit any team size.

If you liked this article, consider sharing