  Background: Test-case quality has always been one of the major concerns in
software testing. To improve test-case quality, it is important to better
understand how practitioners perceive the quality of test-cases. Objective:
Motivated by that need, we investigated how practitioners define test-case
quality and which aspects of test-cases are important for quality assessment.
Method: We conducted semi-structured interviews with professional developers,
testers and test architects from a multinational software company in Sweden.
Before the interviews, we asked participants for actual test cases (written in
natural language) that they perceive as good, normal, and bad respectively
together with rationales for their assessment. We also compared their opinions
on shared test cases and contrasted their views with the relevant literature.
Results: We present a quality model which consists of 11 test-case quality
attributes. We also identify a misalignment in defining test-case quality among
practitioners and between academia and industry, along with suggestions for
improving test-case quality in industry. Conclusion: The results show that
practitioners' background, including roles and working experience, are critical
dimensions of how test-case quality is defined and assessed.
