Understanding Test Plan and Test Strategy for Effective Test Automation

Ensuring that your application is high-quality, reliable, and user-friendly requires a systematic testing approach. Test plan and test strategy serve as the foundation for a successful software testing effort, providing a roadmap for teams to follow.

What is a Test Plan

A test plan is like a blueprint for testing. It defines all the testing attributes like the scope and objective of testing, template, schedule, required resources like software, hardware, tools and human resources, test environment, and test deliverables.

Example: You are building a banking application. Your test plan should include the scope of testing the application’s functionality, payment processing, user account creation, and all other modules. The objectives could be to identify defects, validate the application’s usability, and ensure its compatibility with multiple browsers.

What is a Test Strategy

Test strategy is more like a guiding philosophy that provides high-level guidance on how testing should be conducted for a particular application.

Example: Your banking application’s test strategy can include details on how to approach the testing of the feature, types of testing, tools to be used, the scope of automation, and guidelines for required testing. 

Understanding their Core Differences

Both test plan and test strategy are important for efficient testing. However, test plans and test strategies are sometimes confused to be similar because of the common elements. 

The key here is to understand their core differences. This will help teams to establish clear definitions and guidelines for creating, documenting, and maintaining test plans and test strategies.

Now that you are aware of the differences, let’s see how to effectively create the Test Plan and Test Strategy.

Test Plan Template

Use the Test Plan document to describe the testing approach and overall framework that will drive the testing of the project. A test plan template typically includes the following sections

1. Scope and Objectives: Clearly define the scope of the testing effort, along with what is in and out of scope for the testing.
2. Test Strategy: Describe the overall testing approach.
3. Test Coverage: Identify the functionalities, platforms, and configurations that will be included as part of the testing. 
4. Resources: Identify all the resources required for testing, including personnel, tools, hardware, and software.
5. Schedule: Provide a timeline for the testing.
6. Test Environment Setup: Describe the testing environment.
7. Test Cases and Scripts Creation: Provide detailed information about test cases and test scripts, including unique IDs, steps, and expected results.

Test Deliverables: Identify the document deliverables such as test plans, test cases, test scripts, and test reports.

Test Strategy Template

The format of a test strategy is more abstract and provides high-level guidelines for the overall approach to testing, focusing on the types of testing and methodologies. 

A test strategy template typically includes the following sections:

1. Scope and Objectives: Clearly state the objectives and goals of the testing along with roles and responsibilities.
2. Testing Approach: Define the overall approach, such as manual testing, automation, or a combination.
3. Testing Types: Specify the types of testing and guidelines to be followed for each testing type, such as performance, functional, regression, load, and security testing.
4. Tools and scope of automation: List the tools and any guidelines to be followed. 
5. Test Environment: Outline information about the number of environments and the required setup for each environment.
6. Test Data Creation: Provide guidelines on how the test data is created.
7. Defect Reporting: Outline the defect triaging process. Know more about the importance of defect triaging here: Defect triage: The catalyst in bug resolution process
8. Test Metrics: Establish the key metrics such as defect density, test coverage, and execution time, to measure the efficiency and quality of the testing process 
9. Risks and Mitigations: List all the testing-related risks and their respective mitigation plans.

Review and Approvals: Identify the stakeholders for review and sign-off.

Need help with effective end-to-end testing with all the control in your hands?

Webomates offers a cloud-based Testing as a Service platform powered by AI that supports test planning, creation, management, execution, maintenance, and reporting for a wide range of applications, including web, API, desktop, and mobile, across a wide variety of environments. 

Our QA team embeds intelligent test automation, shift left testing, and continuous testing principles throughout your software delivery pipeline, ensuring a hassle-free release, every time! 

We manage the workload during the entire process, while you are in control of the test strategy and test plan. 

Take a look at the high-level process:

Webomates is an industry- and tool-agnostic AI-based software testing solution that optimizes testing in various scenarios, speeds up product releases, and generates the promised business value.
Schedule a demo to explore how our AI-powered software testing solutions can enhance your business outcomes! You can also reach out to us at info@webomates.com. 

Tags: AI Testing, AI-based software testing, Software Testing, Test Automation, Test plan