Jira Concept: How to decide when to use Test Category or Test Plan?

Question

I am migrating my test cases from TestRail to Zephyr. In TestRail, their are folders, sub-folders upto 4 levels. Each folder level have test cases.
While migrating to Zephyr(Jira Tool), we have 4 options to add the test cases: Test Category, Test Plan, Test Group and Test (in the same chronological order).

Is there any correct way for how to categorize the test cases based on the available option?

Answer 1

• Test Category - Functional Category including non-functional (depends on the application and how you have it divided up)
• Test Plan is the structure of the tests you desire to execute. This is usually following happy and non-happy paths with user stories in mind, but it is totally up to the way you have the application broken down.
• Test Group is a group of tests that go together. Usually this is done when you need to test a certain section of the application and you have certain tests that fall into that section, so if one gets selected then the whole group gets selected. Again this totally depends on the breakdown of your application and the structure of the tests written against it.
• Test is just that, a single test that is written for a specific functionality in the application (or non-functional)
• Test Cycle you don't have mentioned, but that is the actual execution cycle where you can group any tests you want into a specific execution thread by selecting them. This ties to a software version specifically so it will give you a consistent version to execution results perspective.

I hope this helps. They leave it pretty open and adaptable for the flexibility to set things up the way you want them to be. You can also utilize categories and labels for the tests similar to regular Jira items which adds even more ability to customize tests.