Quality attributes of test cases and test suites -- importance & challenges from practitioners' perspectives
Huynh Khanh Vi Tran, Nauman bin Ali, Michael Unterkalmsteiner, J\"urgen B\"orstler, Panagiota Chatzipetrou

TL;DR
This study surveys practitioners to understand the importance and challenges of various quality attributes of test cases and test suites, highlighting key attributes and common issues faced in practice.
Contribution
It provides empirical insights into practitioners' perceptions of test quality attributes and identifies prevalent challenges in ensuring high-quality testing artifacts.
Findings
Fault Detection, Usability, Maintainability, Reliability, and Coverage are deemed most important.
Resource Efficiency, Reusability, and Simplicity have divergent opinions depending on context.
Common challenges include inadequate definitions, lack of metrics, and insufficient review processes.
Abstract
Context: The quality of the test suites and the constituent test cases significantly impacts confidence in software testing. While research has identified several quality attributes of test cases and test suites, there is a need for a better understanding of their relative importance in practice. Objective: We investigate practitioners' perceptions regarding the relative importance of quality attributes of test cases and test suites and the challenges they face in ensuring the perceived important quality attributes. Method: We conducted an industrial survey using a questionnaire based on the quality attributes identified in an extensive literature review. We used a sampling strategy that leverages LinkedIn to draw a large and heterogeneous sample of professionals with experience in software testing. Results: We collected 354 responses from practitioners with a wide range of experience.…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
