How to manage outdated test cases in the most effective way? (TCs are not a part of VCS)

Question

Previously I worked a lot on projects where we had test cases integrated into our VCS, so it was really easy and not disturbing to delete them if they become outdated (knowing that we can retrieve them later). On my current project we use a separate tool for a test case management, and I joined this project when a lot of test cases were already created in a classic style. Recently developers hide a huge part of the functionality(so it is unusable, and there is a ton of TCs for that functionality). But it could be that in some point in the future, we'll get a request to 'unhide' that functionality and return whole or a part of it back.

That's why I just don't want to simply delete those test cases. Unfortunately, in this test management system we don't have some specific tags or test case types for such cases (I probably will talk to team mates about introducing at least a separate test case type for this case).

Please share your experience in managing outdated test cases.

Answer 1

You can create a folder in you test management tool which should be named; "Future use(Don't delete the folder)" OR "Archived Test case" where you can move your unwanted test cases into that folder and later when you need it, you can easily retrieve them as per your requirement. This way you don't need to delete the unwanted test cases and also they won't come in your way in regular testing.

Answer 2

Tag it on feature level

If all obsolete test cases belong to same functionality, tag it on top level (feature/epic) as obsolete or something.

By having tagged on top level , it then can be easily filtered in any queries on TMT level.

Answer 3

Why not simply ignore them?

Documentation doesn't jump on someone's desk and order itself to be taken into consideration when considering what you will do.

You can add some sort of tag, either in an appropriate field or in the document title indicating it shouldn't be taken into consideration at the moment.

Thus, whenever you are gathering information for an exploration session, you would skip reading these documents.

Answer 4

As a qa company, any test case created for an application's functional perspective should never be deleted. Rather we should archive those test cases in a new folder in Test Case Management tool. Moreover, it is always helpful to add a tag named 'archived' or 'obselete' if the test case management tool provides us an option.