After completion of test initiation and testing process finalization, test lead category people are concentrating on test plan document preparation with “what to test?”, “how to test?” , “when to test?” , “who to test?” . in this test plan document preparation test lead is following below approach.
Testing team formation: in general test planning process starts with testing team formation. In this stage test lead is depending on below factors.
Availability of test engineers
Test duration
Availability of test environment resources
Case study:
Test Duration: C/S, Web, ERP 3 to 5 months of system testing
System s/w 7 to 9 months of system testing
Machine critical 12 to 15 months of system testing
Team Size: Developers : Testers=3 : 1
Identify Tactical Risks: After formation of testing team, test lead is analyzing selected team level risks. This risk analysis is also known as Root Cause Analysis.
Ex: Risk 1 : lack of knowledge of testing team on that domain.
Risk 2 : lack of budget (time).
Risk 3 : lack of resources (testing tools not available)
Risk 4 : lack of test data (improper documents)
Risk 5 : delays in delivery
Risk 6 : lack of development process rigor
Risk 7 : lack of communication (in b/w testing team to development team)
Prepare test plan: after completion of testing team formation and risks analysis, test lead concentrate on test plan document preparation in IEEE format (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).
Format:
Test plan ID: unique number / name.
Introduction: about project
Test items: names of all modules in that project ex: website.
Features to be tested: new module names for test design. (What to test)
Features not to be tested: which ones and why not? (Copy test cases from server)
Approach: selected list of testing techniques by project manager to be applied on above modules,(finalized TRM)
Testing tasks: necessary operations to do before start every module testing.
Suspension criteria: possible raised problems during above modules testing.
Ex: exception handling.
Feature pass/fail criteria: when a module is pass and when a module is fail.
Test environment: required hardware’s and software’s to conduct testing on above modulus.Ex: WinRunner
Test deliverables: names of testing documents to be prepared during above modulus
EX: test cases, test procedures, test scripts, test log, defect reports for every modules.
Staff and training needs: names of selected test engineers for this project testing
Responsibilities: mapping between names of test engineers and names of modules.
(Work allocation)
Schedule: dates and times.
Risks and mitigation: raised problems during testing and solutions to overcome.
Approvers: signatures of project manager and test lead.
Review test plan
After completion of first copy of test plan document development, test lead conducts a review on that document for completeness and correctness. In this review meeting test lead concentrate on coverage analysis.
Coverage analysis:
Business requirement based coverage (what to test?)
TRM based coverage (how to test?)
Risks based coverage (when & who to test?)
After finalization of test plan, test lead is providing some training sessions to selected testing team on project requirements.
Art of Testers 