Have you missed the lecture where your professor unveiled all about test plan management and its advantages, and now you are lost since it’s the topic of your assignment? Chill, since you have reached the right solution for your worries. We have articulated what test plan management is in brief and how to test plan management is advantageous for the overall testing process. Test plan management is a process that can be said to be the most imperative part of the whole software testing process; you would not be wrong to believe that without test plan management, software testing could not even take place.
So without further ado, let us roll right into it!
Defining test plan management
Test plan management is the process where you manage the testing activities in a pragmatic order to ensure a high quality and error-free testing of the product software can take place. This process consists of different phases, namely organizing, controlling, ensuring traceability of the process, and visibility of the software testing to deliver the desired end product that is free of errors and malware. Several test plan management software is used for this process to ensure no errors are made, which makes the process more automated, aligned, and efficient.
There are several prerequisites that are needed to be followed to make sure that your test plan management is done precisely. The following are three major points to be taken care of:
- The testing system landscape has to be set up in the landscape management.
- The test planner has to define the solution with a branch and scope
- The test planner has to assign the test cases and executables to the set of solutions, branches, and scopes.
The test management process involves various phases that we have glimpsed in the last section; now, let us understand the two main parts of how software test plan management is done!
Test Management Process
The test plan management is mainly divided into two phases, the planning of software testing and the test plan execution. These phases are further subdivided into more phases; let us have a look into them:
Test Plan Management Planning
As the name suggests, this is the phase where the test plan document is created based on test risk analyses, test results estimation, test planning, and test organization. This is the first step of test plan management that is crucial for reducing risk while finding the problems; this phase reduces the time to fix, time to market, and the overall cost of developing the software.
Software Testing Execution
Moving forward to the second phase of test plan management, that is, the execution of software testing; the test plan prepared during the first phase of test plan management is executed in this phase. This phase is also further divided into three main categories; test monitoring and control, issue management, and test report & execution. It includes determining if enough resources are available for the software testing, collecting and recording important information about the process, and describing the results found during the whole testing process in terms of test coverage and exit criteria.
Benefits of Test Plan Management
The test plan management benefits are aligned with the benefits of the test plan, have a look below:
- The test plan helps to keep track of possible tests that are to be executed on the system after coding
- It serves as a guide to software testing throughout the software development process
- The test plan acts as a valuable record of what and how software testing is done
- The whole test plan can be reused in case regression testing is conducted later on
- It gives a piece of detailed information concerning upcoming testing efforts, inclusive of the scope of testing, test deliverables, test schedules, released criteria, and risk & contingencies.
We have covered what test plan management is, how it is done and what are the advantages of test plan management. We hope that you now have got all the data crucial for preparing your assignment. If you have any questions comment them in the section below, and if you found the blog informative, do share it with your friends and other classmates.