Test Case vs Test Scenario

Teams often use these interchangeably, which causes confusion when someone asks "how many tests do we have" and gets wildly different answers depending on which one they're counting.

A test scenario is a single sentence describing what to verify: "user can reset their password." It says nothing about how.

A test case breaks that scenario into an executable procedure: preconditions, exact steps, specific input values, and the expected outcome for each. One scenario usually expands into several test cases — a valid email, an unregistered email, an expired reset link, a reused token.

In practice

Write scenarios first, during planning, to make sure you're covering the right things. Write test cases when you're ready to execute — manually or as automation. A test plan is typically a list of scenarios; a test suite is the collection of cases that implement them.

With autonomous testing, this distinction loosens: a plain-English test plan reads like a scenario, but Manta expands it into concrete, executable steps itself — you don't hand-write the test case.