In this article I’ll share my thoughts and experience about a possible list of testing artefacts that could help to improve the quality assurance in the software development working with test plan.
Before to see the different test plans It’s important to know so basic artefacts like :
- Test Case: List of steps in order to cover only one application scenario where the test case should have a descriptive title of the scenario and describe the result of each step
- Test Results: evidence of execution of a test case
- Test Plan: is a group of test cases
- Regression Test: used to test the regression produced an existent feature
- Smoke Test: list of steps to cover quickly different features without enter in details.
- Automation: Not all the Test Cases could or should be automated.
There are different ways to automated the test cases using : unit test, integration test, client side unit test or UI test)
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There are different test plans like :
1. Sprint Test Plan
Full list of test cases that cover the developed scenarios of feature or bugs done during the sprint.
The “Software Tester” role will be responsible to create a bunch of test cases that cover every feature or bug but also the “Developer“ could help defining “the headlines test cases” that won’t took in consideration by the “software tester”. Other reason why the “Developer” could write “the headlines test cases” is in order to clarify which are going the test cases scenarios which is going to be develop.
2. Sprint Regression Test Plan
List of existent test cases or new test cases that should be tested due to the modifications done during the sprint which affect existent features of the application.
In every sprint some “new Feature” or “bug fix” could produce a regression and the “Developer” is the main responsible to help to identify the regression scenarios in the sprint. The “Developer” should write at least the regression headlines test cases to help the “Software Tester” write the sprint regression test cases to be included as part of the “sprint regression test plan”.
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3. Sprint Smoke Test Plan
List of existent test cases from the sprint to help “test quickly” the develop features or bugs in the sprint .
The “sprint smoke test plan” are useful to check if the new features and existent one continue working fine when the new version is released to a customer . This test cases should be quickest to execute than the “the sprint test cases” .
4. Full Regression Test Plan
Subset of test cases from all the “sprints regression tests plan“ to validate it wasn’t produced any regression in any relevant feature of the full application.
The “Full regression test plan” will take more time to be executed than the “Sprint regression test plan”. With this test plan it will help to validate if any of the main feature doesn’t have any issue even it wasn’t modified that area of the application.
5. Full Smoke Test Plan
Subset of test cases from all the “sprint smoke tests plan“ to validate quickly it wasn’t produced a regression in any relevant feature of the full application.
The execution of this type of test should be much faster than execute the “Full Regression Test Plan”. This test plan help to check faster if the main feature of the application continue working without errors.
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6. Full/Master Test Plan
Collection of all test cases which cover the full application scenarios.
This collection of test cases are the sum of the all the “sprint test plan” in test plans (without duplicate test cases just reuse the existent one). This test plan is the slowest to be executed because has all the test cases.
The “Full/Master Test Plan” should be mandatory to be executed in major versions of the application to be sure if the all the area of the application continue working fine.
Conclusions
There are different type of test plan and depending of the time and people helping to assure the quality of the software it could be generated different test plan.
I think at least to validate a minimum quality in the software it should be generated in every sprint some test cases to be added to a “sprint test plan” and that created test could be reused as part of a “Full regression test plan” and also the “Full/Master Test Plan”.
I’ll continue writing more about how to improve the quality assurance of the software covering different topics to show software to manage test plan.
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