Best Practices For A Successful Product Development
How To Plan Your Tests And Determine Your Test Strategy
Even if you think you can get by without one, your product team requires a test plan and strategy.
It’s easy to assume that almost all issues come from inexperienced QA engineers who damage the entire team’s hard work if you don’t have a clear grasp of the procedures that occur when a team works on a software product. However, without documentation, the value and purpose of the quality assurance process is not clear. That’s when a test strategy and plan come in handy.
Even for those who are fully acquainted of the methods, monitoring the quality of QAs remains a challenge. If you don’t assess quality, you have no control over the testing process and can’t predict the findings. So how are you supposed to know what you invested in?
A test plan is an estimate that helps you to plan expenditures and resources over time, create budgets, monitor performance, and boost product value. Having quality assurance documentation leads to an organized process, which is commonly acknowledged as a best practice. Nonetheless, many teams ignore this stage in their projects.
Here we will explain the advantages of having a test plan and strategy, as well as the most relevant aspects of each record for the team.
Why Do You Need a Test Plan and a Test Strategy?
There is no single accurate, universal document that can be used as a standard for all sorts of projects. The structure of these documents may vary from project to project, they may exist independently and refer to one another, or even the test strategy may be included in the test plan.
The parts to include in these two documents are listed below so that the entire team can benefit from them.
Test Plan
• Work scope
• Quality and acceptance criterias
• Assets and resources
• Test documentation
• Deliverables
• Risk analysis
• Process definition
Test Strategy
• Test methodology
• Test levels
• Test types
• Priorities
• Obstacle mitigation
• Test stages
• Release verification
• Reporting
• Updates
• CI/CD testing pipeline
The importance of executing these documents impacts the entire team, which includes everyone participating in product development. A test plan and strategy make it easy to understand what a QA team performs and to coordinate work with other teams.
