🧭 Planning

When a team is in the initial planning phase of a bigger project or application with multiple phases, it is valuable for QA to work with the Project Manager and/or Account Manager to determine a plan for testing at various stages of development.

For Example:

  • If the plan is to have 10 total releases, each release with a required feature, the QA can plan to test:
    • Each feature alone
      • Each feature combined with other features.

More specifically, QA can also ensure quality along the SDLC by planning different test strategies and methodologies on a schedule:

  • Unit testing with every task/feature
  • Functional testing with every task/feature
  • Acceptance testing with every task/feature
  • Non-functional/load/volume testing with each release
  • Usability, Smoke and Regression testing intermittently.

These tests can be given general benchmarks for:

  • When to begin
  • Duration (in days)
  • Resources required
  • Desired Status by a deadline.

High-level test objectives for a Master Test Plan could be:

  • To ensure that the application satisfies all project requirements.
  • To ensure that all components of the application function according to design.
  • To ensure that all use case scenarios can be executed successfully.
  • To ensure that the application can perform under the anticipated user load.
  • To determine if the application is intuitive and easy to use, and if it presents the users with the intended user experience.