Most QA teams I’ve worked with have one thing in common: they chase coverage numbers but still miss the scenarios that matter.
The truth? 100% code coverage doesn’t protect you from production failures.
I’ve seen checkouts crash because no one tested what happens when:
- A discount code expires mid-transaction
- Inventory runs out while a user is paying
- A session times out during checkout These are real-world scenarios. Your coverage metric doesn’t matter if you’re not testing the flows that keep your business alive.
Test Coverage vs Code Coverage
- Code coverage: How many lines of code your tests execute
- Test coverage: Which user scenarios your tests validate
You can execute every line of code and still miss critical paths, like declined payments after inventory reservation.
A Risk-Based Approach
Not all features deserve equal testing effort. Focus on High Risk = High Impact × High Likelihood.
Examples for e-commerce:
- Payment failures
- Cart abandonment
- Inventory sync issues
- Session timeouts during checkout Leave the footer links and banner rotations for later.
Practical Playwright Strategies to Boost Coverage
- Parameterized tests: Write one test, run it across multiple scenarios.
- Data-driven testing: Keep test data in external JSON/CSV to scale coverage easily.
- Cross-browser coverage: Run the same test across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
- Environment coverage: Run tests in QA, staging, and even production (safe smoke checks).
Beyond Vanity Metrics
The playwright won’t hand you coverage percentages. That’s good.
Instead, measure what matters:
- Scenario coverage: Which user flows are actually tested
- Risk coverage: What percentage of high-risk areas are protected by tests
Key Takeaways
- Start with user journeys, not just features
- Focus on scenarios that break the business, not vanity metrics
- Maintenance cost is real: be selective with what you automate
- Perfect coverage is a myth, but strategic coverage is achievable
Want the full deep dive with code examples and strategies?
Read the complete blog here: Improving Playwright Test Coverage: Best Practices + Strategies
Top comments (1)
From my experience with Playwright, I've noticed that the usual gaps in test coverage tend to be edge cases like failed logins, permission issues, and input validation problems. These are often overlooked because teams focus more on the happy paths. To strike a balance between thorough coverage and keeping things manageable, I like to keep my tests modular and reusable, focusing on high-risk features and critical user flows. This way, I reduce overhead and make sure the tests stay easy to update as the app changes. I also use data-driven testing to cover as many scenarios as possible and take advantage of Playwright’s cross-browser capabilities to ensure everything behaves consistently across browsers like Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. To keep tabs on how well the tests are doing, I track failures and compare them with past production incidents-basically, making sure the tests are actually helping us catch the stuff that matters.