Test Cases

What Is a Good Test Case?


This research was partially supported by NSF Grant EIA-0113539 ITR/SY+PE: "Improving the
Education of Software Testers." Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Abstract
Designing good test cases is a complex art. The complexity comes from three
sources:

• Test cases help us discover information. Different types of tests are more
  effective for different classes of information.
• Test cases can be “good” in a variety of ways. No test case will be good in
  all of them.
• People tend to create test cases according to certain testing styles, such as
  domain testing or risk-based testing. Good domain tests are different from
  good risk-based tests.