How Developers Engineer Test Cases: An Observational Study

One of the main challenges that developers face when testing their systems lies in engineering test cases are good enough to reveal bugs. And while our body knowledge on software and automated case generation is already quite significant, practice, still ones responsible for manually. Therefore, understanding developers' thought- decision-making processes a fundamental step making better at software. In this paper, we observe 13 thinking-aloud different real-world open-source methods, use these observations explain how engineer cases. We then challenge augment findings by surveying 72 practices. discuss results from three angles. First, propose general framework explains reason about testing. Second, describe detail overarching strategies apply Third, compare relate with existing future studies would advance topic.