US Patent 10394697 Focus area integration test heuristics

Techniques are disclosed for identifying an optimal set of test cases of a larger test case bucket to execute on a new software release. The release includes one or more patches modifying development code of a previous release of the software, and each test case includes metadata specifying a history of the test case relative to an execution on the previous release. In each patch, it is determined, based on the metadata, whether at a test case targets the development code modified by the patch. Upon determining that the test case targets the development code, a score associated with the test case is incremented. The test cases are prioritized for execution based on score.