Test Planning and Control

Test Planning is the most important phase of Software testing life cycle.
Once the project and product requirements have been done, test planning starts and all the objectives, effort and cost estimates for the entire project would be determined in this phase.

Major tasks in test planning should include:

--Designing test strategy, including:
test scope--Which components or features would be tested(in scope) and which would be not(out of scope).
test type--Set priority of test types for the project based on the context, such as integration test, system test, user acceptance test, etc.
risks & issues--List all potential risks&issues and the corresponding mitigations.
test logistic--Who will test? When will the test occur?

--Defining test objectives
The overall objective of the testing is to find as many software defects as possible and ensure the software is bug free before release.
To define the test objectives, do the following 2 steps:
1. List all features(functionality, performance, GUI, etc.)that may need to be tested.
2. Define the target or goal of the test based on the above features.

--Defining test criteria
Entry criteria set to which test should begin or suspend(e.g. suspend at 40% fail rate of test cases);
Exit criteria set to which test should be a successful completion(e.g. exit at 90% run rate of test cases and 95% pass rate).

--Planning resources
Human resources: test manager/leader/analyst
System resources: server/test tools/network/computers

--Planning test environment
Real business and user environment, physical environment.

--Schedule & estimation
Tasks, Members, Estimate efforts, Start time, End time, etc.

--Determining test deliverables
Before testing: test plan, cases, specification;
During testing: test data, traceability matrix, logs
After testing: test report, defect report, release note.

Test Control:
--ongoing activity of comparing actual progress against the plan
--track, report the status, take actions necessary to meet the mission of the project
--the testing activities should be monitored throughout the project
--test plan takes into account the feedback from monitoring and control activities