Test Planning - Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Software Development Life Cycle - page 83

Test plan items 1-8 describe the skills, process, and technology framework
needed for the testing to be accomplished. Availability of all these items for the test-
ing effort is prerequisite for successful testing of the application or system.
Items 9(a)-9(g) provide development phase-specifi c test planning activities that
culminate in test results for that phase. The term “test case” is introduced here for
the fi rst time and is explained in the next section of this chapter.
One question that frequently arises about the test plan is the nature of the physical
document. Some testing methodologies mandate that all the items must be written
in a single, all-inclusive document. Other testing methodologies mandate that items
1-8 and 10 in the test plan be a stand-alone document and that each testing detail
Section 9 be a stand-alone document. Both approaches represent extremes. The truth
lies somewhere in between. Usually the size of the development project gives you
an idea about the size of the test plan. If it is a small or medium size development
project, say 1-15 developers, then perhaps the test plan can be written and updated
conveniently as a single document. When the development project has more than 15
developers, then the complexity of each development phase may cause you to split
out some or all of the test plan item 9 occurrences into separate documents for writ-
ing document management convenience.
By necessity, the fi rst draft of the test plan will contain a testing schedule that
closely follows the development schedule. As the development efforts proceed, more
information is acquired and understood about the detailed nature of the testing to be
done. The acquisition of additional testing detail will necessitate revisions to the test
plan details and testing schedule to provide successively more accurate scheduling
estimates. Expect the revised testing schedule in the test plan to become longer as
testing concerns surface from the detailed development that were not apparent at the
start of the development (the devil is in the details !). It is not unusual to fi nd your-
self one third of the way through the development phases and discover that testing
completion will need 3 or 4 weeks more than the original development deadline.
5.3 TESTCASES
One outcome of preparing the test plan is a list of test cases needed for each
development phase. Test cases are initially identifi ed by the testing team as high-
level testing requirements from the new application's business requirements,
business risks, or software specifi cations. As the developers identify more and more
details about the new application, the testers expand the description of the test case
to include very detailed testing instructions and expected outcomes.
The test team manager might say, “at this phase of development, we need to
test all the data entry screens.” This would cause the test team to identify all the
data entry screens to be developed and the general business functions these data
entry screens will support. For example, if the application under test was a payroll
system, then there might be six groups of data entry screens: employee personal
information, employee benefi ts information, employee tax information, state tax
information, and federal tax information. To keep testing execution management