Hello,
You are right, the text in the Help file is not very clear in this point. However, it tells that NS is intended to manage test runs and that is what I was talking about. Possibility to synchronize test execution on remote machines is not the only task for the master machine. It also gathers remote test logs, controls the state of the remote execution and it is able to handle special events using scripts. For example, the OnNetVarChange event. To perform all these tasks, TestComplete goes to the Running state which automatically blocks any modification of the opened project. If we make such modification possible, try to imagine what can happen if a script handler of an event is fired while we are editing this script.
So, since the Network Suite feature was initially designed in this way and never intended to be a pure test management tool, we even do not have a technical possibility to implement your feature request without significant redesign of this functionality. And since there are special tools that perform this task very good (QAComplete, Jenkins and some other), we do not see any good reason to seriously change the Network Suite functionality or implement new functionality for test management within TestComplete.
I am very glad that we are discussing this topic as this discussion can help everyone understand the Network Suite feature better and find a better way to manage test execution on several machines. Thank you for your feature request! :)
Dmitry Nikolaev
TestComplete Customer Care Team Lead