Why is the initial state of a test suite 'In Progress' then you flip it to 'In Planning' then back to 'In progress'? This doesn't make sense to me and I can't find any documentation regarding MTM 2013 states on why this was done? I don't want to edit the states if I don't have to but would like some justification to keep it as is.
You can set the state of a test suite to indicate whether you are ready to run its tests or whether its tests have all completed.
If you don't want to use this feature, leave the state at its default value of In Progress.
Set the state to inform other team members:
- In Planning: The test cases in the suite are not yet ready to run.
- In Progress: The test suite can be run.
- Completed: The tests have completed and do not have to be re-run in this test suite. You might still run the same test cases in other test suites or test plans.
Note: The tests in a test suite cannot be run unless its state is In Progress.
According to your description, seems you are lacking of the permission "Manage Test Suite" . Then you could not be able to change the state. You could double check this with your TFS Admin. More details please see this link: Test Suite Security Permissions in MTM
Update
In MTM2010, the default state for a test suite in a test plan is still In planning. It's hard to judge a specific period of a product. At that time , one of the top feature requests from Microsoft Test Manager/Test Case Management users across various forums has been the ability to customize the Test Plan and Test Suite artifacts. Based on the feedback, with Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 3, we are adding the functionality to add custom fields and workflows to Test Plans and Test Suites.
With TFS 2013 Update 3, you can customize test suite states, and removed the restriction to only let you run tests if the test suite state is “In Progress”. Some users like you might have their own custom states that they want to use for tests that can be run, so this change allows more flexibility.
Prior to TFS 2013 Update 3, test plans could only have “Active” and “Inactive” states and test suites could only have “In Planning”, “In Progress”, and “Completed” states. With Update 3, a test plan can be customized to have different workflow states. If you use an MTM client with a version of Visual Studio prior to Visual Studio 2013 Update 3, you might get an error when you try to update the state because this version of the client was not designed for custom states. Upgrade your MTM client to Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 and you will be able to change the states. Or you can open the test plan or test suite work item directly from MTM (type Ctrl+g, then enter the id of the work item). More details please refer this blog: Test Plan and Test Suite Customization with TFS2013 Update3
So in your scenario, the best solution is updating your TFS to TFS2013 update3 or above and also updating VS to VS2013 update3 or above.