Test plan

A test plan is a document describing all the actions of a tester.

A test plan is a document that contains a description of all activities related to testing.

All future testing related activites

It is usually drawn up by a quality manager (Test Manager / QA Manager) or a lead tester (Lead Software Testing Enginner / QA Team Lead)

Every project needs its own test plan. They may differ between projects, but usually within a company/team the plans are drawn up according to a certain standard.

A Test Plan should not be confused with a Test Case Suite, which is a sequence of steps (Test Steps)

Plan components (Attributes)

• Objective: Objective. What this test plan was written for. Which procedures are planned to be followed to ensure software quality.
• Scope: Scope. Which specific features will be tested and which will not.
• Testing Methodology: Testing methodology. which type of testing will be applied ( load, system and so on )
• Approach: Approach. What has to be written in the plan: test cases or test scenarios or flow charts
• Assumption: Assumption. Will the tester have support from the development team, detailed documentation, will the necessary knowledge about the project be handed over.
• Risk: Risk. All possible risks related to the fact that some of the assumptions are not true.
• Backup Plan/Mitigation Plan: Backup plan or mitigation plan for the consequences of risks materialising.
  
  Contains the actions that have to be taken if something from the item Risk happened. One of the testers quit - who will take their cases. The Product Owner quit - who has the knowledge about the product.
• Roles & Responsibilities: Roles and responsibilities.
  
  Example:
  
  The manager is responsible for allocating resources; signals when new employees need to be hired; for the availability of the test environment; communication with the client, other teams and company owners.
  
  The lead testing engineer is responsible for distributing tasks among testers; reviewing test cases; testing the most complex and important cases
  
  The testing engineer must understand the product requirements; is responsible for writing test scenarios and test cases; sending them for review to the lead engineer; executing tests; tracking the life cycle of found bugs;
• Scheduling: Scheduling
  
  Drawing up the order of all actions and allocating time for them.
  
  For example:
  
  On 1 January test cases have to be written.
  On 2 January test cases have to be reviewed.
  On 3 January the test cases are approved and a Smoke Test is run
  On 4 January component testing
  5 and 6 January integration testing
• Defect Tracking: Defect tracking. Which bug-tracking software to use Jira , Pivotal Tracker or something else. What the tracking procedure is for different Severity & Priority.
• Test Environment: Test environment.
• :

Functional Step

Verification Step

For each verification step there must be a defined expected result (Expected Result)

Article author: Andrei Olegovich