An Industrial Case Study on Test Cases as Requirements

TL;DR

This paper investigates how test cases are used as requirements in agile projects through a case study of three companies, revealing benefits, challenges, and scenarios for this practice.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the use of test cases as requirements in agile development, highlighting practices, challenges, and application scenarios.

Findings

Test cases can serve as requirements in agile projects.

Using test cases as requirements offers benefits like validation and traceability.

Challenges include managing test case complexity and ensuring completeness.

Abstract

It is a conundrum that agile projects can succeed 'without requirements' when weak requirements engineering is a known cause for project failures. While Agile development projects often manage well without extensive requirements documentation, test cases are commonly used as requirements. We have investigated this agile practice at three companies in order to understand how test cases can fill the role of requirements. We performed a case study based on twelve interviews performed in a previous study. The findings include a range of benefits and challenges in using test cases for eliciting, validating, verifying, tracing and managing requirements. In addition, we identified three scenarios for applying the practice, namely as a mature practice, as a de facto practice and as part of an agile transition. The findings provide insights into how the role of requirements may be met in agile development including challenges to consider.