Ever been tasked with planning your software testing efforts? Ever felt like you’ve left something out? And as a consequence feared the software would fail rapidly and all fingers would be pointed at you? 

Using this Software Testing Planning Checklist could help put your mind at ease.

This checklist is not a magic solution.  It is designed to help you think about the project you are working on, identify potential gaps and potentially give you new ideas on how to approach your testing.

Of course, these can't nor won't always cover all the things that you should be considering, but they are a step in the right direction to help you think and analyse the software under test.

Software Test Planning

Understand the why…

How can you plan for something if you don’t understand the reasons why? What are the goals? Why have you even been assigned a testing project?

• Are there standards to be achieved?
• Has anyone defined or agreed on a goal or a mission?
• How will you find the problems that matter?
• Who is testing accountable to?
• Who are the stakeholders and how will you satisfy them?
• What are the risks?
• How cost effective is the software testing plan?
• What testing outputs will be produced?
• When is testing done?
• Are you prepared for the boring admin and practical delays?

Outputs of testing the software:

What are the outputs of testing? With agile type approaches of working it can be increasingly hard to physically show the output of testing.

• Test strategies and plans
• Test cases
• Bug databases
• Exploratory testing notes / results
• Conversations
• Documentation
• Product updates

Types of testing:

The types of testing available can help you define what type of testing needs to happen. Most software testing plans don’t cover all of these at once. They could include things like:

• API Testing
• Performance Testing
• Load Testing
• Stress Testing
• Automation in Testing
• Functional Testing
• Usability Testing
• Accessibility Testing
• Security Testing
• User Testing
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
• Compatibility Testing
• Exploratory Testing
• Scenario Testing
• Alpha / Beta Testing
• Protoype Testing
• Unit Testing
• Regression Testing
• Specification Based Testing
• Testing in Production
• Pair Testing
• Evaluating Testability
• Content Testing

Software Testing Plan Formats

Of course, you’ll want to consider how you will communicate that plan…

• Written documents
• MindMaps
• Wiki
• Spreadsheets
• Checklists
• Diagrams
• Whiteboards
• Post it notes
• Trello board
• Kanban board

Project Management

Plans change – be prepared to adapt!

• Are you aware of business and technology processes at help the project move forward?
• What system are you using to manage the project and testing?
• How is everyone communicating?
• How can you get feedback?
• How much time do you have?
• What’s the schedule?
• When can you expect releases?
• What people are available?
• What documentation is accurate and available?
• Is there anything that could block testing?
• What relationships could you put to use?
• Who can you collaborate with?
• How and with who can you share knowledge?
• What can you teach others about testing?
• What can you learn from others to improve your testing?

Resources

Every testing effort needs resources. Do you know what resources you have access to? You could be thinking about things like:

Your test lab

• Platforms
• Tools
• Bug tracker
• (Test) Management Tools
• Test library

People

• Test Team
• Users
• Product Team
• Business team
• External consultants
• Clients

Information

• Documents
• Requirements
• User Guides
• Web materials
• Product history
• Competitors
• Technology standards
• Organization/business laws
• Business and technology ethics
• Social media and press
• User feedback

Understanding the Product

It helps to think of and brainstorm all the things that put the software together…

How does it work?

• How well do you understand the users?
• Do you understand the foundations and structure of the software?
• Functionally, do you know all the things it does? Inside out? Back to front?
• The Platform - what is it designed to work on?
• Data wise - what can it take in? What states can it exist in?
• The future - how well do you understand the vision and the future of the software business you are testing for?

Applying the testing skills…

• What oracles and heuristics are you applying?
• How can you be confident of coverage?
• Think like a tester-user - do all the things that apparently users never do.
• How can you apply automation to lighten the load?

Is it worth breaking the product down into components?

• Features
• Stories
• Modules
• Releases
• Classes
• Design
• Hardware
• (Organisational) vision

The Risks…

• What circumstances could be challenging?
• How is the software or its users open to vulnerability?
• How does it fail? Does it fail gracefully?
• What problems and risks exist and how can you best protect against them?

What is the software capable of?

• What can the user do?
• Who are the users?
• What can’t the users do?

Data, all the data…

• What goes in?
• What goes out?
• What already exists?
• How does it change over time?
• How does it handle large or small amounts of data?
• What if things are done in various sequences?
• How does it handle strange data?
• Unexpected data?
• What data has already been tested?

Using the software…

• Who are the users?
• What are the stress cases of users?
• What environments will it be exposed to?
• How and when will it be used?
• What could be negative situations?
• What malicious things could the software be exposed to?
• How can unconscious bias of the team create problems?
• What problems are being discovered?