Poster: Challenges with Automotive Test Case Specifications

In the automotive domain standards like ISO 26262 require a structured test process. Test cases are usually derived from requirements and documented in test case specifications. They provide a necessary basis for test implementation and execution. Therefore, test case specifications are a fundamental part of the automotive test process. The aim of this work is to gain insights into the creation and processing of test case specifications from a practitioner's point of view. In order to identify challenges concerning automotive test case specifications, we conducted an explorative case study based on 17 semi-structured interviews at a German OEM and three automotive suppliers. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed qualitatively to identify the challenges. We summarized the challenge to a taxonomy consisting of nine main categories: (1) availability and (2) content-related problems with input artifacts, (3) knowledge-related problems, (4) test case related problems, (5) the test case specification content-related problems, (6) process-related problems, (7) communication-related problems, (8) quality-related problems, and (9) tool-related problems. In general, we noticed that the interviewees were aware of challenges in terms of test case specifications in the automotive domain. Nevertheless, some of the current solutions are not efficient and require a lot of manual work.