Requirements of well-crafted tests
Today's software world has agreed that tests are crucial to working software. But what makes a good software test? What software components do we have to test? And, more importantly, how can we develop well-crafted tests?
In general, tests should fulfill the following requirements:
- Predictability
- Isolation
- Reliability
- Fast execution
- Automation
- Maintainability
The following describes these requirements.
Predictability
First of all, software tests have to be stable, predictable, and reproducible. The same project circumstances must predictably produce the same test case outcomes, that is, passing or failing. Tests that sometimes pass and sometimes fail are not helpful at all. They either distract developers by providing false positive results or suppress actual bugs with false negative outcomes.
Circumstances that need to be taken into account are, among others, the current time, time zones, locales, randomly generated data, and concurrent execution of other tests...
