The planning process is driven by a Test Strategy Plan, from which an accumulation of more detailed plans is created to cooperate with each of the testing phases.
Since the requirements and acceptance criteria are known, the basic System and Acceptance plans should be created.
Plans for Integration test (unit test as well) and Beta Test depend in the main on the design. This is realized during the Physical Design phase.
The Test Strategy Plan is a high-level plan which clarifies the general requirements and approach to software testing. It clarifies the general testing scope by identifying the systems or main components of system that are necessary to test and what level of testing is need to be applied.
The Test Strategy Plan determines how detailed test planning, development, and fulfillment are to be accomplished. The plan identifies answerable persons or companies; testing methodologies, strategies, techniques and testing tools; test documentation; training required.
Test Plans are developed for the different kinds of system-level testing: System, Integration, Acceptance, and Beta.
In common, the Test Plans comprise such considerations:
- A list of items which is necessary to test
- General testing time-table
- Test documents, records, or management tracking tools to be used during the software testing process
- Main characteristics of every item to be tested
- Primary definition of the test cycles
- A specification of reviews to be conducted on detailed test specifications, which derive from the Test Plan
- Technical resource requirements
- The general approach to testing
- Responsibilities and personnel required
- How defects will be specified, ranked, reported, and cooperated with
In the time of Development phase, the necessary test specifications are developed. The tests will be used during the integration, system, beta, and acceptance tests to verify that the system works accurately.
The tests and test documentation are derived from the associated Test Plan and include:
- Test Design Specification (identifies the test procedure and test case specifications that suffice the design)
- Test Case Specification (documents the actual values used for input, along with the anticipated outputs)
- Test Procedure Specification