A test suite can sometimes grow to an extent that it is nearly impossible to execute. In this case, it becomes necessary to minimize the test cases such that they are executed for maximum coverage of the software. The following are the reasons why minimization is important:

• Release date of the product is near
• Limited staff to execute all the test cases
• Limited test equipment or unavailability of testing tools

When test suites are run repeatedly for every change in the program, it is of enormous advantage to have as small a set of test, cases as possible. Minimizing a test suite has the following benefits:

• Sometimes, as the test suite grows, it can become prohibitively expensive to execute on new versions of the program. These test suites will often contain test cases that are no longer needed to satisfy the coverage criteria, because they are now obsolete or redundant. Through minimization, these redundant test cases will be eliminated.
• The sizes of test sets have a direct bearing on the cost of the project. Test suite minimization techniques lower costs by reducing a test suite to a minimal subset.
• Reducing the size of a test suite decreases both the overhead of maintaining the test suite and the number of test cases that must be rerun after changes are made to the software, thereby, reducing the cost of regression testing.

Thus, it is of great practical advantage to reduce the size of test cases.