Testing Life Cycle

Test Plan Preparation

The software test plan is the primary means by which software testers communicate to the product development team what they intend to do. The purpose of the software test plan is to prescribe the scope, approach, resource, and schedule of the testing activities. To identify the items being tested, the features to be tested, the testing tasks to be preformed, the personnel responsible for each task, and the risks associated with the plan.

The test plan is simply a by-product of the detailed planning process that’s undertaken to create it. It’s the planning that matters, not the resulting documents. The ultimate goal of the test planning process is communicating the software test team’s intent, its expectations, and its understanding of the testing that’s to be performed.

The following are the important topics, which helps in preparation of Test plan.
· High-Level Expectations

The first topics to address in the planning process are the ones that define the test team’s high-level expectations. They are fundamental topics that must be agreed to, by everyone on the project team, but they are often overlooked. They might be considered “too obvious” and assumed to be understood by everyone, but a good tester knows never to assume anything.

· People, Places and Things
Test plan needs to identify the people working on the project, what they do, and how to contact them. The test team will likely work with all of them and knowing who they are and how to contact them is very important.

Similarly, where documents are stored, where the software can be downloaded from, where the test tools are located, and so on need to be identified.

· Inter-Group Responsibilities
Inter-Group responsibilities identify tasks and deliverables that potentially affect the test effort. The test team’s work is driven by many other functional groups – programmers, project manages, technical writers, and so on. If the responsibilities aren’t planned out, the project, specifically the testing, can become a worst or resulting in important tasks been forgotten.

· Test phases
To plan the test phases, the test team will look at the proposed development model and decide whether unique phases, or stages, of testing should be performed over the course of the project. The test planning process should identify each proposed test phase and make each phase known to the project team. This process often helps the entire team from and understands the overall development model.

· Test strategy
The test strategy describes the approach that the test team will use to test the software both overall and in each phase. Deciding on the strategy is a complex task- one that needs to be made by very experienced testers because it can determine the successes or failure of the test effort.

· Bug Reporting
Exactly what process will be used to manage the bugs needs to be planned so that each and every bug is tracked, from when it’s found to when it’s fixed – and never, ever forgotten.

· Metrics and Statistics
Metrics and statistics are the means by which the progress and the success of the project, and the testing, are tracked. The test planning process should identify exactly what information will be gathered, what decisions will be made with them, and who will be responsible for collecting them.

· Risks and Issues
A common and very useful part of test planning is to identify potential problem or risky areas of the project – ones that could have an impact on the test effort.

Test Case Design
The test case design specification refines the test approach and identifies the features to be covered by the design and its associated tests. It also identifies the test cases and test procedures, if any, required to accomplish the testing and specifics the feature pass or fail criteria. The purpose of the test design specification is to organize and describe the testing needs to be performed on a specific feature.

The following topics address this purpose and should be part of the test design specification that is created:
· Test case ID or identification
A unique identifier that can be used to reference and locate the test design specification the specification should also reference the overall test plan and contain pointers to any other plans or specifications that it references.

· Test Case Description
It is a description of the software feature covered by the test design specification for example, “ the addition function of calculator,” “font size selection and display in word pad,” and “video card configuration testing of quick time.”

· Test case procedure
It is a description of the general approach that will be used to test the features. It should expand on the approach, if any, listed in the test plan, describe the technique to be used, and explain how the results will be verified.

· Test case Input or Test Data
It is the input the data to be tested using the test case. The input may be in any form. Different inputs can be tried for the same test case and test the data entered is correct or not.

· Expected result
It describes exactly what constitutes a pass and a fail of the tested feature. Which is expected to get from the given input.

Test Execution and Test Log Preparation

After test case design, each and every test case is checked and actual result obtained. After getting actual result, with the expected column in the design stage is compared, if both the actual and expected are same, then the test is passed otherwise it will be treated as failed.

Now the test log is prepared, which consists of entire data that were recorded, whether the test failed or passed. It records each and every test case so that it will be useful at the time of revision.