In Software testing, There is much debate that how to achieve quality and how to plan the testing activities. This tutorial will explain to you all about Software Test Plan and suggest you with the ways on how to plan test activities from scratch along with the test planning and test execution.

Most of what is expected to achieve quality in a software test phase with best practices is summarized in this topic. These practices have an impact in addition to improving Quality.

Key practices that improve overall software quality include the following:

Keep eye on driving requirements and have a focus on crucial use cases of the application early in the development cycle. Use tracking metrics and indicators to measure progress and quality.

One of the important aspects of the testing life cycle is planning. Hence Test-Plan document plays a very important role in testing. The Test Plan document is derived from the product Requirement Specification, or Use Case Documents. It is usually prepared by a testing team especially by lead or manager who is taking care of all the testing activities in product development. The document contains what to test, how to test when to test and who will do what test. It is a detailed extensive document that basically has outlines of your strategy, Test Estimation, test deliverables, resources (manpower, software, and hardware) required for testing, test schedule etc.

8 Things to keep in mind before starting with Test-Plan

1.        Analyze the product

Product analysis processes to become familiar with the product! What does it do? What does it look like? All this information you would need to be asked before a product can be analyzed. It is also important to consider how it becomes user-friendly.

2.        Design the Test Strategy

Design Test Strategy is essential when keeping a plan in mind. Test Strategy tells you how to use testing for managing project and product risks. It contains the process which needs to be bifurcated into different levels of testing phases. It also indicates which testing strategy should be used in which situation? Strategies can differ based on project requirements like regulatory requirements, risk levels and different methodologies of software development.

3.        Define the Test Objectives

The goals and objectives of software testing are numerous, which when achieved help developers build a defect less and error-free software.

4.        Resource Planning

Understand the scope of your application. Based on this we must plan our resources and other related activities. Our resource planning should be well enough effective that will show how we are going to use our resource in all testing phase.

5.        Plan Test Environment

It is one of the most important Phases for the tester, which plays a key role in achieving success in the testing. It provides all the pre-requisites that are required to perform the task of testing on a particular software product.

6.        Schedule & Estimation

Schedule and estimation are one of the important parts of product development. It shows how things will go during the development. The schedule is basically told that how the things will be delivered to the customer. It shows the delivery schedule of the product. Test Estimation, on the other hand, is a management activity which serves how long a Task would take to complete. Estimating effort for the test is one of the major and important tasks in Test Management.

7.        Identify Entry and Exit Criteria:

Entry and exit criteria in testing cycle define when to start and when to stop testing. This is a very crucial stage to identify these constraints in the testing cycle. We must have knowledge about the areas and conditions in product development where to start with our testing when to stop.

8.        Determine Test Deliverables

Test Deliverables are the artifacts which are given to the customer in the form of software project during development lifecycle. There are different test deliverables at every phase of the software development lifecycle. Determine and plan the test deliverables. Provide the evidence of your deliverables which can show your efforts to be applied in the project to build quality.

Conclusion

Avoiding deterioration of software quality over time requires a conscious effort, both on the part of the Product Owner and the engineering team.

Have the pre-plan before starting with the testing phase is one of the best steps towards gaining quality. The test plan should be reviewed a number of times prior to base lining it or sending it for approval. The quality of your test plan speaks volumes about the quality of the testing you or your team is going to perform. Update the plan as and when necessary. An out-dated and unused document stinks and is worse than not having the document in the first place.