What is a Test Plan?

Test plan document lists all the critical aspects of software testing. From test objectives and strategies to schedules and deadlines. The test plan also offers insight into the tools and resources needed to complete the project on time and within budget. It acts as a blueprint for the test organization, ensuring the crucial testing task is carried out effectively.

Teams with a test plan document can gain deeper insight into user scenarios, start and end dates, and environment details. The plan identifies potential risks in the testing process and specifies the various exit parameters. With expected results documented well before testing activities begin, the test plan acts as a benchmark for comparing actual results. Using the test plan can help QA engineers minimize test execution times.

Why are Test Plans Important in Software Testing?

A well-planned, properly crafted, and comprehensively documented test plan is a great reference point for testing teams. Since it is updated as the testing project progresses, it provides all stakeholders a real-time view of the project. Using the test plan, teams can ensure all testing activities are coordinated and executed correctly and in accordance with the schedule. Test plans in software testing are extremely important as they:

A test plan is a detailed reference for testers across the testing lifecycle. Creating an effective test plan requires teams to consider several aspects.

Here are the essential steps to writing a test plan:

Define the testing strategy

Defining a detailed testing strategy is the first step in writing a test plan. This strategy must mention the project objectives and the tools and resources needed to achieve them. The strategy should also include the efforts to go into the testing process and associated costs.

Determine the scope of testing

If you want to drive the best testing outcomes, you must determine your project scope and testing scope. While project scope acts as a reference point throughout the project, testing scope helps outline test boundaries. Documenting the scope early in the process can help maximize test coverage while containing the challenge of scope creep.

List the testing tools and methodologies

Another critical aspect of writing a test plan is listing the tools and methodologies. This information will help team members have a clear idea of the project while allowing them to have all the skills in place to maximize tool value and ROI.

Define testing criteria

A successful test plan must also clearly depict the testing criteria. As you list all the software features to be tested, you must also finalize and document the standards or rules governing your testing process. For instance, you can define the benchmark for suspending tests if 50% of test cases have failed. You can also establish benchmarks that signify the successful completion of a test phase or project, allowing you to move on to the next stage.

Plan resource allocation

While the testing strategy only mentions the resources, this step requires planning the allocation in detail. A comprehensive breakdown of the different types of resources required for project completion is critical. This includes human effort, equipment, and all the infrastructure needed for accurate and comprehensive testing.

Describe the test environment

Describing the test environment is also a vital aspect of the test plan. This helps to provide insight into the nature of the test environment, along with its configuration and availability. In this step, make sure to document the details of the software, operating systems, test data, test devices, test scenarios, etc.

Document the test schedule

When testing any software or feature, having a timeline in place is very important. If you want to ascertain your test schedule, you must break down the project into smaller tasks and allocate the time and effort required for each. To do this successfully, you must factor in several variables, including team availability, number of working days, etc. You must also keep some cushion for unexpected delays caused by resource unavailability, changing scope, and extended testing schedules.

Identify testing deliverables

The last step of the test plan is identifying testing deliverables. This includes the documents, tools, and other equipment needed to support testing activities. Across various stages of the testing lifecycle, you must have documents ready on the test design, test scripts, test data, and simulators. You must also use these documents to update test results, integrate defect reports, and include release notes.

Transform your Testing Outcomes with Effective Test Plans

In a highly competitive and volatile business environment, test planning in software testing acts as the backbone of the entire project. Without an extensive and well-crafted plan, QA engineers can get confused. Undefined goals, poorly documented strategies, and a lack of information on deadlines can derail the entire software testing project. This can hinder software quality, hamper tester morale, and delay release cycles.

As QA engineers embrace different types of software testing and advance towards test automation, following a set of guidelines can help them build an efficient test plan that effectively tests code. Embrace these steps today to yield quick test results and drive efficiency across your testing teams.

Steps to automate smoke tests using ACCELQ.

1. Codeless

ACCELQ’s Web Automate offloads all the arduous tasks like choosing the framework, choosing the language of automation, the framework implementation, reporting, implementing the test cases. We can focus on designing the best tests and implementing those in simple English language. A test case here is a group of Actions, which can be correlated to a user’s activity while using the product. For instance, consider a test scenario where – “Verification of Bank login” is to be done. For that, the actions will be “Invoke Browser”, “Login to Bank”, maybe “verify that left panel navigation links are present” and then “logout”.

These Actions definitions in turn constitute the underlying logic to achieve that action. For instance, the “Login to QBank” Action will have the statements like “Enter Username”, “Enter Password”, and then “click on Submit button”. And all these steps and actions definitions are completely codeless.

2. Say Goodbye to flaky tests

Finding unique and stable locators is another challenging part many struggle with. ACCELQ simplifies automation development by supporting a Locator-Free approach to element identification. This eliminates the need for frequent maintenance efforts, as automation scripts are not impacted by changes to the application’s front-end HTML structure.

It also has a powerful Self-healing capability to address run-time element identification issues associated with the dynamic nature of application screens, ongoing updates to application UI, user errors in picking attributes for the Element definition, etc.

ACCELQ’s Web Automate includes the concept of “Context Synchronization”, it’s a way of ensuring the site is ready to perform actions. So, all tasks of ensuring whether a page is fully loaded or if a field is interactive, etc. can be swiftly done by “Context Synchronization”, thus making tests more stable.

3. Modular and Reusable

Codeless tool, yet no compromise made on the modularity. The advantages of an OOPs Framework like reusability and abstraction are easily achievable in this tool too. A test is broken down into steps. These modular steps called Actions can be reused in a different test later. For instance, in our example of “Verify QBank Login”, the Action “Login to QBank” can be reused in another test scenario, say “Perform Banking transaction on QBank” where “Login to QBank” will be the obvious first step. It is indeed a sustainable mode of test automation.

4. Cross-browser testing

All modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Edge are supported. So no external infrastructure service is needed. In addition, ACCELQ supports integration with Device Farms like Browser Stack, Sauce Labs, etc. they can be easily integrated and used if need be.

5. Scheduling runs and reporting

Periodic runs can be scheduled on ACCELQ’s platform. Besides CI integration jobs can also be set. It supports all leading platforms like Jenkins, Azure, Bamboo, etc., to trigger automation externally. ACCELQ’s reporting is another charm to use, which provides insightful summaries and perspectives. Built-in features like – sharing test run results over email and webhooks that help notify test kick-off and test completion over chat mediums like Teams, slack, etc. are also provided

With more streamlined processes in software development, shift-left testing is gaining traction. Shift-left testing is all about testing early and testing often. It advocates pushing testing to the early stages of development so that critical bugs during later phases are reduced, and the quality of the product is increased. As more and more organizations are embracing shift-left testing ethos, this wonder of a tool becomes even more indispensable for faster test automation. Being a codeless framework, it will not need special automation skills for someone to automate UI tests. Thus, making testing effortless in earlier software development stages. When organizations advocate that product quality is everyone’s responsibility and that everyone should be contributing towards it. It becomes even more crucial that test Automation is easy to implement. So that more hands are willing to contribute. And nothing gets easier than ACCELQ’s Web Automate.

With fast-paced product development, we need equally fast-paced Test Automation. No one is oblivious to the benefits of Automation. And ACCELQ’s Automate web is an emblem of ingenuity that will undoubtedly keep you on top of your Automation game. By offloading regression tasks to this tool, you can have plenty of time for exploratory testing. It’s not an overstatement to say ACCELQ’s Web Automate is here to shape up the future of Automation testing.