In today’s software testing, teams often struggle with organizing thousands of test cases. A disorganized test case structure leads to wasted effort, poor coverage, and significant inefficiencies in the testing process. To be specific, Test Case Organizational Chaos is one of the top issues of Test Management Challenges in 2025.
This article will explore how AgileTest, with its Folder Feature, directly tackles these common challenges, streamlining test management and boosting overall quality.
1. A Disorganized Test Case Structure: What’s the Problem?
Little by Little, Until Everything Exceeds your Control
Imagine your team is working on a feature update, and suddenly you're overwhelmed by the sheer number of test cases that need updating. Previously, in some first sprints, you just created some basic test cases for quick verification purposes. Then, it looks good to you since all your test cases can fit on a single screen.
Gradually, after several iterations, you added new test cases. It may seem like just a slight increase in volume, still manageable with a few pages and search options by test case ID or name. You may think that, unless you can remember some information about the test cases, finding a specific test case with filters and a search bar is feasible. But what if you have hundreds or thousands of test cases, then could you still remember all the distinct information about each of them?
As the project progresses, the test case list grows larger, and what once seemed controllable can quickly become overwhelming. This is when a disorganized structure takes place in your test case management.
From Disorganized Structure to Duplicate Test Cases
As your test case library grows, disorganization leads to redundancy. Let’s have a look at how a Disorganized Structure leads to confusion in test case management. In practice, testers usually search for existing test cases only when they need to update them or access additional information.
You Added a Duplicate Test Case Accidentally, Since You Don’t Know It Exists
When you only need to access information about existing test cases, you will typically search for them. Even when you can't find the relevant test case, you may continue searching or make adjustments to locate it, as you must review the test details. But this only happens when you can make sure that these test cases exist. In some situations, when you and your team can’t locate test cases due to a different naming approach, you may just accidentally duplicate them while thinking that you have found new, valuable test cases.
You Added a Duplicate Test Case Intentionally, Since You Don’t Want To Waste Time
When you need to update test cases, you may need to create and replace the old version manually in every single project. This process is time-consuming and often results in errors. For large-scale organizations, testers may miss updating certain test cases by mistake, or even intentionally create a new one, considering the new version an update to save time. While this may seem harmless at first, just running the same test cases again to ensure accuracy, it can create duplication, leading to more confusion and inefficiencies in the long run.
Think of a situation when new members enter your project. After joining, they could find themselves confused by the existence of multiple similar test cases. Without clear organization, they may struggle to understand which test case is the most up-to-date or relevant. This confusion can lead to situations where you report a defect against one test case, while you could overlook a very similar one, even though it tests the same functionality. The lack of clarity between duplicate test cases leads to inconsistent results and missed defects, further impacting the disorganization and inefficiency in the testing process.
When Data Speaks: The True Cost of Test Case Chaos and Duplication
Unstructured test case management can be a source of waste. In a Developer Survey in 2022, 62% of developers confirmed that they have to spend over 30 minutes each day struggling with poorly structured issues. This leads to a loss in productivity, which turns out to be significant costs. This wasted time is estimated by industry analysis to cost organizations approximately $62,000 per developer, annually, in lost productivity alone (Pratham, 2025)
Further compounding this issue, one finding from JAMIA also uncovers that 32% of duplicated tests take place in one research study about the healthcare industry. As a simple calculation, your testing projects have lost nearly one-third of the budget for duplicated work, excluding the time and effort of team members. This duplication increases the highest cost in testing: maintenance. Duplication means that you need to perform that expensive, time-consuming process multiple times.
Imagine how much time your team could save if they no longer wasted time struggling with the unstructured organization of test cases or worrying about duplication.
The Intertwined Relationship of Test Case Disorganized Structure & Duplication
The challenges of test case duplication and disorganization are not separate problems. In fact, they come together, creating a cycle that keeps getting worse and wastes time. The problem starts when your test cases grow without a clear structure. When a tester needs to quickly validate a feature, the difficulty of searching through hundreds or even thousands of disorganized test cases becomes overwhelming. Instead of spending time finding the right test, the team often takes the easier route: creating a new test case. This becomes a habit, and as more team members do it, the duplication problem grows. Every new test case makes it harder to find the original one.
The more duplicated test cases, the worse the situation becomes. When you have more than one similar test, the maintenance work increases. If a feature changes, the team has to update several tests instead of just one. The more this chaos grows, the harder it is to manage the test library.
2. How AgileTest Saves the Day
This problem starts when teams lack an efficient way to manage their growing test cases. Testers often end up creating redundant tests or struggle to track which test cases need updating. AgileTest’s Folder Feature directly addresses this problem, allowing you to organize test cases efficiently and ensure that updates are applied consistently across all plans.
Structure all Test Cases within Folders
AgileTest’s Folder Feature solves this problem by organizing test cases into easy-to-navigate folders, so your team can quickly locate and update any test case. Instead of scattering test cases all over the place, now you have everything in folders. You can set these folders up based on your needs—whether it's by feature, version, or testing purpose. For instance, if you’re working on a login feature, you can group all related test cases into a “Login Feature” folder, with subfolders for Front-End and Back-End tests. This means no more searching through dozens of pages to find the right test cases. You can easily locate what you need, right where it should be, saving time and reducing frustration.
With AgileTest, you’re not just organizing test cases at a single level; you can create a hierarchical tree to store them. This makes it easy to maintain a clean and manageable test case storage, saving you valuable time when managing large, complex projects. Even when you can’t find a test case using the search bar or filters, you can simply navigate to the relevant feature folder and select the subfolder it belongs to. With a logical management path from folder to subfolders, even new members can easily find your test cases without wasting time.
You can also view your folders in a sidebar view. This helps you have a quick overview of your current test cases. This structure gives you more convenience in selecting and drag-and-drop test cases between folders. Whether you're working on a small set of tests or handling a vast array of them, the sidebar keeps everything within easy reach.
Eliminate Effort to Update Test Case
The key to preventing test case duplication is addressing its two root causes: accidental duplication from difficulty locating existing tests and intentional duplication from the manual creation of new tests when updating. The first cause can be easily solved when all test cases are managed within Folders, as previously mentioned in the above section.
To address the second cause, AgileTest offers a feature that automatically updates all old test cases with the new version after an update, eliminating the manual creation and replacement process.
We understand that manual work should be minimized to boost productivity. That's why you only need to update your test case once, and AgileTest takes care of the rest automatically. For example, you can go to the Test Case section → Choose a Test Case → Conduct any changes such as adding a new step, modifying current info, etc.
You’ve just added a new step to a test case and updated some information. Instead of manually going through every test plan to update the new version, AgileTest does it automatically. All the changes will be updated for this test case in all the Test Plans you have imported it into after you Sync new changes in the Test Execution.
Even your previous Test Executions will be automatically updated. By clicking the “Sync button” the latest changes to each test case will be reflected in the corresponding Test Execution. The next time you re-run these Test Executions, everything is ready and stays up-to-date without any extra effort to set up.
Importing Test Cases from Folders
AgileTest helps you make use of your organized test cases into easy-to-navigate folders. It enhances the entire process, making it effortless to import test cases into your Test Plan and Test Execution. How does it actually help?
Traditionally, you will have to find and select test cases manually to put in your Test Plan. With AgileTest, this task becomes much easier. Instead of manually searching for and selecting every individual test case, you can simply choose the entire folder containing your desired tests. All the test cases within that folder are imported, ready for execution. With this, you don’t have to spending hours adding every test case one by one.
This is how AgileTest can remove the bottleneck of disorganized test case structure and help your testing process become much more effective regarding test case management aspects.
Explore more about the AgileTest Test Case Management feature now.
Final thoughts
Efficient test case management is crucial in today’s fast-paced development environment. With AgileTest’s Folder Feature, your team can focus on creating high-quality software, not searching for test cases. Organize, update, and manage your test cases more efficiently, boosting productivity and ensuring consistency across all testing plans.
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