Guide 04 · Test Plan
Test Plan
Deciding what to test, how, by whom and when, and documenting it in a test plan the team can rely on.
Start with these short notes and examples. This guide will be expanded over time.
What is a Test Plan?
A Test Plan is the master document that outlines the testing process for a project or release. It describes the scope, approach, resources and schedule of testing activities.
It identifies the test items, features to be tested, testing tasks, who will do each task and risks that need contingency planning.
What does it cover?
- Scope: what is in scope and out of scope.
- Approach: the test levels and types to use.
- Resources and responsibilities: people, environments, tools and task owners.
- Schedule: when testing activities happen and which dependencies affect them.
- Criteria and deliverables: when testing can start or finish, and what evidence to produce.
- Risks and contingencies: what could block testing and how the team will respond.
Example · CRM project
For a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) project, the plan covers customer information management, sales tracking and customer support.
It includes schedules for unit, integration, system and acceptance testing, and identifies the team members responsible for each task. For example, developers own unit checks, QA coordinates integration and system testing, and business representatives take part in acceptance testing.
A dependency might be a working test environment with sample customer data. If it is delayed, the plan records the impact and the fallback work the team can perform.