Software Testing - Test Plans

Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) starts with the creation of a Test Plan. It is a document which contains all the information regarding testing scope, resources, budget, test approaches, roles and responsibilities, deadines, environments, and potential risks. Thus a Test Plan is a set of guidelines defined by project stakeholders for the successful testing of a software.

What is a Test Plan?

A Test Plan is an important document for carrying out the software testing activities. It is created with the intent to detect as many defects as possible in the initial stages of the software development life cycle (SDLC). It is also observed that products guided by a detailed test plan incurs less of cost after being shipped to the customers. This is because the bugs are detected early. It is a costly affair to fix defects at the later stages of SDLC.

A Test Plan gives a clear picture on how to come up with the optimal use of resources while delivering a quality software. It helps to sleek the total development effort and to launch the software early. Also, a Test Plan incorporates the likely risks that may come up in future and ways to mitigate them.

Who Uses a Test Plan?

A Test Plan guides almost every member of the team to deliver quality. A developer uses it to measure the scope of testing as identified by the test team, and the probable areas in the software where the test cases are mainly targeted.

For the testing team, a Test Plan lays the foundation for all the testing activities. It details the strategies to be taken up, timelines, number of test cycles, overall testing processes, roles and responsibilities of each member. Thus a Test Plan helps a testing team to detect as many bugs as possible, verify software features, and improve the test coverage.

A Test Plan is used by the project managers to work on the deadlines, planning the resources, improve the software quality, and create an environment of trust and coordination across the development and testing teams. The Business Analyst uses the Test Plan to gauge if the test cases are covering all the business requirements of the customers and detect those which are irrelevant with respect to the existing users.

The Compliance team uses a Test Plan to validate if the testing procedures, and processes are as per the standards. The Support teams which work with actual customers utilize a Test Plan to anticipate a potent bug, and come up with possible solutions for them.

What Makes up a Test Plan?

A Test Plan has multiple components as listed below −

Test Objectives

The Test Objectives section contains the direction of testing, standard processes and methodologies that will be followed. Thus it mainly focuses on detecting maximum defects and enhancing the quality. This section can be divided into various modules and contains information about testing the functionalities of each module and their performances.

Scope

The Scope section contains all the items to be tested and what all items will not be included in the testing phase.

Test Methodology

The Test Methodology section contains information on the testing types, tools, and methodologies that will be adopted.

Approach

The Approach section contains the high-level test scenarios and flow of events from one module to the next.

Assumptions

The Assumptions section contains the assumptions taken into considerations to test the software, for example, the test team should get all the knowledge, support, assistance on from the development team and there will be enough resources to carry out the testing process.

Risks

The Risks section contains all the possible risks, for example, wrong budget estimation, production defects, resource attrition etc, that may come up and the mitigation plans of all these risks.

Role and Responsibilities

The Roles and Responsibilities section contains information about individual roles and responsibilities to be carried by test team members.

Schedule

The Schedule section contains information about timelines for every testing activity, for example, test cases creation, test execution etc.

Defect Logging

The Defect Logging section contains all the information about the defect logging and tracking activities.

Test Environment

The Test Environment section contains information on the environment specifications, for example, hardware, software, configurations, installation steps etc on which test will be performed.

Entry and Exit Condition

The Entry and Exit condition section contains information about the requirements or checklists that need to be satisfied prior beginning and ending of test activities.

Automation

The Automation section contains information about what all features of the software are a part of the automation.

Effort Estimation

The Effort Estimation section contains information about the effort estimation of the testing team.

Deliverables

The Deliverables section contains information about the list of test deliverables, namely the test plan, test strategy, test scenarios, test cases, test data, defects, logs, reports, etc.

Template

The Deliverables section contains information about the templates that will be used for creating the test deliverables to maintain uniformity and standards maintained across all deliverables.

How to Create a Good Test Plan?

A good Test plan can be created by following the below steps −

Analyze and have the best understanding of the requirements.
Identify the test objectives, and scope of the project.
Identify the test deliverables of the project along with timelines.
Identify all the information of the test environment.
Identify all the possible risks in the project, and its mitigation plans.
Carry out the retrospection meetings to figure out what went right, wrong, and can be improved upon.

Conclusion

This concludes our comprehensive take on the tutorial on Software Testing - Test Plans. We’ve started with describing what is a Test Plan, who uses a Test Plan, what makes up a Test Plan, and how to create a good Test Plan.

This equips you with in-depth knowledge of the Software Testing - Test Plans. It is wise to keep practicing what you’ve learned and exploring others relevant to Software Testing to deepen your understanding and expand your horizons.