We are integrating a testing process in our SCRUM process. My new role is to write acceptance tests of our web applications in order to automate them later. I have read a lot about how tests cases should be written, but none gave me practical advices to write test cases for complex web applications, and instead they threw conflicting principles that I found hard to apply:

• Test cases should be short: Take the example of a CMS. Short test cases are easy to maintain and to identify the inputs and outputs. But what if I want to test a long series of operations (eg. adding a document, sending a notification to another user, the other user replies, the document changes state, the user gets a notice). It rather seems to me that test cases should represent complete scenarios. But I can see how this will produce overtly complex test documents.

• Tests should identify inputs and outputs:: What if I have a long form with many interacting fields, with different behaviors. Do I write one test for everything, or one for each?

• Test cases should be independent: But how can I apply that if testing the upload operation requires that the connect operation is successful? And how does it apply to writing test cases? Should I write a test for each operation, but each test declares its dependencies, or should I rewrite the whole scenario for each test?

• Test cases should be lightly-documented: This principles is specific to Agile projects. So do you have any advice on how to implement this principle?

Although I thought that writing acceptance test cases was going to be simple, I found myself overwhelmed by every decision I had to make (FYI: I am a developer and not a professional tester). So my main question is: What steps or advices do you have in order to write maintainable acceptance test cases for complex applications. Thank you.