Have you ever heard of a Capsule Wardrobe? It’s pretty much narrowing down your clothing and accessories to a certain number of items, which when combined can make numerous different outfits. A test suite is a collection of a minimum number of test cases that when combined, make up a suite that thoroughly tests a certain feature.

I love well thought out test cases and test suites, as they just make my life so much easier. A poorly put together test suite can either cover too much, and things that have nothing to do with your feature, or not cover enough. When done correctly you are able to test what you need to and optimize your time, instead of puttering around hoping you remembered everything.

A test suite is a collection of tests used to test a certain feature, or features. Your test suite will be full of test cases that validate certain parts of a feature, and all together they should fully test a feature, or the areas of the feature that need testing depending on what was added/changed.

A test suite is full of test cases that are grouped into categories. So, for a Facebook login page test suite you could have categories for: Login Functionality, Creating a New Account, UI Verification, Password Reset, Second Login Page (the one you’re redirected to if you fail to login).

By running through a whole test suite you should be able to confidently verify a pre-defined behavior that a feature should have.Your test suite may change as testing needs vary with updates to features, additional new features, etc.