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An Industrial Case Study on Test Cases as Requirements

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Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming (XP 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 212))

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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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lund University, SE-221 00, Lund, Sweden

    Elizabeth Bjarnason, Emelie Engström & Markus Borg

  2. Blekinge Institute of Technology, SE-371 79, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Michael Unterkalmsteiner

Authors
  1. Elizabeth Bjarnason
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  2. Michael Unterkalmsteiner
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  3. Emelie Engström
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  4. Markus Borg
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth Bjarnason .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Casper Lassenius

  2. SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway

    Torgeir Dingsøyr

  3. Aalto University, Aalto, Finland

    Maria Paasivaara

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Bjarnason, E., Unterkalmsteiner, M., Engström, E., Borg, M. (2015). An Industrial Case Study on Test Cases as Requirements. In: Lassenius, C., Dingsøyr, T., Paasivaara, M. (eds) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 212. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18611-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18612-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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