Hierarchical Classification of Test Cases

Introduction

Many users face situations, where hierarchical classification of Test Cases is required. This means that

There is a fixed Hierarchical Structure for organizing Test Cases.
Test Cases exist at different levels of this hierarchy.
Different set of users may have different perspectives; say functional or structural.
Users have need to view a set of test cases by filtering on different perspectives and options; for example a specific user may want to view all test cases belonging to a specific Component.

Custom field of type Hierarchical View can provide one possible solution for this problem; as explained in the following sections.

Defining Custom Field of type Hierarchical View

Custom Fields of type Hierarchical View can be created at the

System Level
OR Project Level

The Field Options configured for this custom field are essentially labels organized in a hierarchical format as shown below.

Multiple Perspectives

This kind of classification helps in defining multiple perspectives on the same set of Test Cases. A user can choose the perspectives relevant to him / her.

In the example below, two perspectives are defined

System Hierarchy
Test Case Type

User Views

A user can

Enable only the perspective relevant to him / her, while there may be many perspectives defined in the system.
Select the labels (using filter functionality) to narrow down the list of relevant test cases. For example, a tester may be interested only in the test cases of a specific Component.

Limitations of Hierarchical View

This mechanism may not be suitable, when the hierarchy is very large, say of the order of 1000's
Since the options are defined by Administrator and cannot be dynamically created by end user; this solution will work only when the updates to the hierarchy are not very frequent.
It may not be possible to restrict the permissions for a subset of test cases.