litecoin is the 1st successful clone of bitcoin with a shorter 1/4 block production time window, and 4x the number max coins (10min/4 = 2.5min, and 4 x 21 million = 84 million), and many variants and improvement later a smaller hash cost.
In summary, because litecoin is successful bitcoin clone (instead of a btc hardfork), it has became the preferred test ground on new updates to the bitcoin family, for example lets say there is a rapid growth of transaction (say it goes 10x for ltc and btc) and litecoin may be force to hf and upgrade it's blocksize to say 2Mb and when successfully done so, perhaps bitcoin will follow later.
honestly @littleboy i though you were a crypto expert by now, i think you're just asking to test out @musing ya?