What is a Quality Plan?

• It is a blueprint for your testing process.
• The Quality Plan addresses the quality requirements, standards, and quality assurance mechanisms for a project.
• Project Manager creates it.
• The Quality Plan includes:
  • Testing and Quality Assurance (who will perform testing, what they will test, how they will test)
    • You define an outline for the project’s quality standards. E.g. A project for a general inquiry system will have less stringent quality requirements compared to a project for critical medical software.
  • Defect Management ( where to document, details to include, test the change)
    • The previous step defines what you will test and how you will test. In this step, you define what you will do when you find a defect/bug.
  • Training
    • This training is for the people who will perform the testing activities and not for the actual users of the system. You explain to the testers briefly the system that they will test so that they can perform testing with logic and sense.

What is Test Workbook?

• It is created by the Business Analyst or Quality Team
• It is a document that holds the test scenarios, test cases, and testing results
• It is used by anyone involved in testing
  • Business Analyst
  • Users / Business
  • Quality Assurance (QA) Team
• The quality plan outlines how the system will be tested. The test workbook guides the testing team of all requirements that should be tested (i.e. what should be tested).

What are Test Cases?

• They are a set of steps which are performed to verify the expected output
• It gives detailed information about any precondition, what to test (requirements), how to test (steps), and the expected result
• They are written such that they can be executed by anyone
• It takes a significant amount of time to create test cases for all requirements
• They may trace back to the specific requirement

The 4 Step Test Creation Guide

1. Understand the requirement you are testing
2. Write step-by-step instructions on how to verify it works
3. Add in expected outcomes to each step
4. Define prerequisites / pre-conditions

Determine Requirement To Test

• Using the requirement document, identify the requirement you are testing i.e what you will test?
• Think through how you would test to verify it works i.e how you would test and how you’ll ensure it passed the testing?

Step-By-Step Instructions

• E.g:
• Requirement: The user should be able to reset their password.
• Steps:

1. 1. Launch the browser (Chrome, Firefox, and IE are supported)
   2. Browser to www.abcFirm.com
   3. In the top right corner click “Login”
   4. On the login screen, below the password entry, click “Forgot my Password”
   5. Type in your email address into the field and click Submit
   6. In the email you receive (within 5 minutes), click the link
   7. Enter your new password in both fields and click Done
   8. Click “Login” and utilize your email and newly created password

Add Expected Outcomes

E.g

Determine Pre-Conditions

• What knowledge does the tester need to have? E.g They should understand HTML
• What access does the tester need to have? E.g. security or login credentials
• If any prior steps to be performed? E.g. Perform action step A before performing action step  B

What is Test Scenarios?

• It is a single general statement that gives a high-level test procedure
• It could include multiple test cases
• It allows the tester to interpret the action needed. It tells them what needs to be accomplished but not how it will be accomplished. They should be intuitively able to figure out the how-to steps.
• It helps adjust for unexpected user test paths and input
• E.g Verify clicking forgot my password generates an email that you can use to reset your password (In the earlier test cases example, there were multiple steps to achieve this scenario)

What is Traceability?

• Tracks requirements through testing and go live
  • Some companies may want to trace everything from business needs to the business requirements to the functional requirements to the design to the build to the test cases and test scenarios till it goes live.
  • They do this so that they can track and confirm that all the requirements are accounted for in the design and the end solution and they all work as expected.
• Ensures all requirements are in the build and have been thoroughly tested
• Can be enforced strictly or loosely
• Extremely time-consuming if strict adherence is required

The post is  based on my notes and understanding from this Testing Tutorial