In a manual test cycle, what is the difference between an item left untested and one recorded as skipped?

Every manual item that ends a cycle without a pass or a fail is an absence, but not all absences are the same. The vocabulary most case repositories offer distinguishes an absence nobody chose from one somebody did, and the difference is entirely about whether a person wrote something down. ## Two different absences | State | How it arose | Who acted | What it tells a later reader | |---|---|---|---| | Untested | The default when the item entered the cycle | Nobody | Nothing was attempted; the item is outstanding work | | Skipped | Someone recorded a decision not to run it | A person, with a reason | The item was considered and consciously left out | | Blocked | Someone attempted it and hit an obstacle | A person, with an obstacle | The run was prevented; the obstacle is named and clearable | Untested is a **default**; skipped is a **write**. That is the mechanical heart of it. An untested item is indistinguishable from an item that was never noticed, because that is exactly what it usually is. A skipped item is a small argument on the record, and like any argument it can be reviewed, disagreed with, and reversed. ## What a skipped result needs to be worth having Skipped without a reason is worse than untested, because it looks like a settled decision while carrying none of the reasoning. A skipped record should say: - **why** - not applicable on this platform or configuration, feature not present in this build, deliberately deferred to a later cycle, or superseded by another item covering the same behaviour - **who decided**, since deferring scope is usually a lead's call rather than an individual tester's - **that it is scoped to this cycle**, because next cycle the same item may well be in scope again If the reason is that the item can never apply - the wrong platform entirely, a feature that was removed - then the honest signal is about the case library rather than this run, and re-recording the same skip every cycle is a symptom worth acting on rather than a habit to keep. ## Why the distinction is worth defending The two words answer different questions for whoever reads the cycle afterwards: - A large untested residue is a **capacity** signal: the cycle was larger than the time or people available. - A large skipped set is a **scope** signal: someone judged a chunk of the plan unnecessary or inapplicable, and that judgment is reviewable. - Collapsing both into one word makes the two indistinguishable, and the reader cannot tell whether the work was dropped on purpose or simply ran out of road. This also matters when a cycle is reopened or extended. Untested items are the obvious candidates to pick up; skipped items should not be silently swept back into the queue, because someone already argued they should not run. ## How the words erode in practice The pressure is always the same: a cycle that is running late looks better when fewer items sit in the untested pile. Watch for: 1. **Skipping to tidy the residue.** Items are marked skipped near the deadline with a reason like no time. That is not a scope decision, it is capacity, and the word should stay untested. 2. **Skipping instead of blocking.** An item that was attempted and obstructed is blocked; recording it as skipped loses the obstacle, and with it the thing that someone could go and fix. 3. **Skipping instead of failing.** An item that ran and misbehaved is a failure. Recording it as skipped destroys evidence that cost someone real time to obtain. 4. **Bulk skipping without individual reasons.** A single reason attached to a large sweep is usually a scope decision that was never made explicit, and it reads as one later. ## Reading the residue at the end of a cycle When the cycle closes, the honest reading of each absent item is: - **untested** - unknown, and nobody tried; the work is still there - **skipped** - unknown, and someone decided that was acceptable; the decision is on the record with a name against it - **blocked** - unknown, and something specific stood in the way; the obstacle is named and can be cleared All three mean unknown. What differs is whether there is a person, a reason, or an obstacle attached to the unknown - and that is precisely the information the vocabulary exists to preserve.