Test Planning 101

A Test Plan ..

* is a contract of the tests identified and agreed upon as a verification release criteria for a feaure.

* is signed off by all stakeholders (test cases don't need that level of granular review from teams outside of QA, since they are by products of the test plan)

* is written during spec/requirement review. Test Plan includes but is not limited to all use cases in a spec.

* highlights acceptance tests (applicable especially in agile model)

Essential components of a test plan:
(Sections that are not self explanatory have been explained alongside)

PURPOSE & SCOPE (Scope could be iteration specific in an agile mode or release version specific in a waterfall SDLC model)

COMPONENTS/FEATURES TO BE TESTED
1.Verification (Positive tests)
2.Validation (Negative tests)

COMPONENTS/FEATURES NOT TO BE TESTED

SECURITY TESTS

LOAD & PERFORMANCE TESTS

STRESS TESTS (Includes failover testing etc)

BROWSER COMPATIBILITY TEST MATRIX

PRODUCTION DEPLOYMENT SMOKE TESTS

RISKS AND ASSUMPTIONS

DELIVERABLES (Example: Test Cases via this tool/URL, Bugs via this tool etc)

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE (eNV) REQUIREMENTS (Especially necessary when more resources than currently available in QA Lab are required to be prepared before the code is dropped to QA)

SCHEDULE AND STAFFING (This may be handled independant of the test plan, but essentially mentions the QA resoUrces selected for this release)

RESOURCES (Spec and requirement documents, Engineering/Architecture docs)