Conducting a Structured Test Plan
Question 16: Have you conducted a structured test plan?
Good Practice: You should test deliverables early on. One of the fundamental lessons derived from delivering IT projects is that the later you leave the testing in the development cycle, the more it costs to fix. A structured test plan should be developed and then conducted by people independent from the development team. In addition to testing the deliverables, you should also test the overall infrastructure over which the deliverables will run. The major components in the architecture should be tested before building the final deliverables.
The test development lifecycle contains the following elements:
- Test plan.
- Test specification.
- Code tests.
- Validate test.
- Run tests.
Test documentation is a required tool for managing and maintaining the testing process. Documents produced by testers should answer the following questions:
- What to test?
- How to test?
- What are the results?
Common Mistakes
- No test plans and therefore no testing.
- Testing conducted in an ad-hoc manner by the development team.
- Waiting until the deliverable is deployed before testing.
- Using test time as contingency.
Warning Sign! Documentation or testing stages are cut to make up time.