Agile Test Plan Template – Samples & Best Practices

The requirements undergo a hard time during the entire process in any agile development project. Requirements are classically written on a “nick of time,” or “just to get the code” basis. This may have several business edges, but this gives rise to making the job of a QA Lead very cumbersome. Even before knowing the project they must start developing the test plans, which must be tailored to satisfy the dynamic requirements. For making the life of a QA lead easy I am going to elaborate some easy ways to achieve writing test plans. Scroll down to the end of the article to download the agile test plan template directly.

5 Rules to be followed for a successful Agile test planning

  1. Outline a Test Strategy

As we are all aware that it may be difficult to spot the components to be tested at the preliminary stage of the project, it is essential to regulate a test plan for the project success.

The test plan must include the following as mentioned below.

  • Creation of Test data:

During the initial sprints, interdependence among the items beneath development involves copying the test data. Even during the next stages to carry our few tests, data must be required to be uploaded in the database. The Testing strategy must understand the time at which the Test Data must be created and the person responsible for the same. Testing tools and types:

Who will conduct the unit test?

When will, the product attain stability to introduce the automation test methodology and tools in the project?

Identify the automation test tools Identify the performance testing tools.

  • Integration testing:

Identify the method to test the integration between the developed product and the peripheral system. What testing tools to be accustomed to testing all these integrations?

  1. Describe Scope

QA is done during the entire process of the agile development cycle at intervals in every sprint. Each sprint, other than “sprint zero” should have obvious code to be tested. For testing and bug fixing hardly few days are assigned. Every testing strategy must describe the prospects in terms of the quality of the code for the sprint demos at the end of every sprint. It must also describe the types of tests to be executed during every sprint. Based on the whole complications of the product, couple of sprints must be dedicated entirely to perform the QA activities.

  1. Re-describe Scope

The Testing strategy template must be a document which is getting continuously that is tracked and documented to echo the modification in the project, as scope changes, often during an agile development project.

  1. Risks and Mitigation Strategies to be identified

Test Plan identifying risks is essential in every product development. Some characteristics might be terribly complicated and it may involve testing several implementation ways, for instance, inadequate time owed to test the characteristic. An improvement approach is to assign more people for a small surge, and the testing is implemented by the users after having a dialog with the customer.

  1. Open and Continuous Feedback Loop is mandatory

It is very significant to remember that the quality is the key while designing the product. Modifications in product characteristics or accumulation of new characteristics will affect the Test Plan and hence the quality of the product will be reduced. It is mandatory that QA Lead along with the product owner and other department heads must be completely occupied in product findings. Keeping this approximation in mind the development team will work with the development or modification of the product guidelines.

There are innumerable other rules for agile test plan creation and must be obeyed during the testing phase in an agile work atmosphere.

Test Plan for Agile

In an agile model, the test plan is inscribed and restructured for every release.  The agile test plan includes types of testing done in that iteration, like test data requirements, test environments, infrastructure, and test results.

Typical Agile test plan template includes the following

 

  • Define Scope of testing
  • New functionalities being tested
  • Based on the features complexity Level or Types of testing
  • Performance and Load Testing
  • Consideration of Infrastructure
  • Risks or Mitigation Plan
  • Resourcing
  • Milestones and Deliverables

Agile testing phases

The agile testing quadrants explain the whole process in four Quadrants and help to understand how agile testing is performed.

 

Quadrant 1 

This quadrant concerns with the quality of the code and the components, which sees the involvement of developers along with the implementation of the technologies and automation i.e. technology driven test cases to support the team and covers the unit testing and component testing of the system at a unit level.

  1. Unit Tests
  2. Component Tests

Quadrant 2

Test cases that are business driven and are implemented to support the team is mentioned in this quadrant. This is requirement focus quadrant. Following test are performed in this phase

  1. Possible scenarios and workflows testing examples
  2. Prototypes User experience testing
  3. Pair testing

Quadrant 3

Feedback to quadrants one and two are provided in this quadrant. The test cases are used as the basis to perform automation testing. Several rounds of iteration reviews are carried out in this quadrant and that builds confidence in the product.  Following testing are done in this quadrant.

  1. Usability Testing
  2. Exploratory Testing
  3. Pair testing with customers
  4. Collaborative testing
  5. User acceptance testing

Quadrant 4

This quadrant concentrates on the non-functional requirements such as performance, stability, security, etc. The purpose of this phase is to convey the traits which are not functional and conventional value.

  1. Non-functional tests – Performance and Stress testing
  2. Security testing – authentication and hacking
  3. Infrastructure testing
  4. Data migration testing
  5. Scalability testing
  6. Data migration testing
  7. Scalability testing
  8. Load testing 

Note: It is not mandatory, to follow the quadrants in a sequential manner. A tester can tart from any of the quadrants as per the priority, requirements, risks involved, and its own choice.

Checklist – Agile Testing

  • Data field checks for conformance to field specifications, like date, month, and year.
  • Numeric field checks for numeric format adheres to the specific fields
  • Alpha field checks for blank or non-blank data, highest and lowest range values, valid or invalid character symbols etc.
  • Defect Check tracks the defect log with steps to replicate defects so that we may analyze and debug the defect.
  • Epic breakdown checklists an entire list of features and breaks it down into 8 patterns –
    • Workflow steps
    • Business rule variations
    • Major effort
    • Simplicity or complex nature of the application
    • Variations in data
    • Data entry methods
    • Defer performance
    • CRUD operations
  • Planning readiness check, this consists of a preparatory task that should be completed before starting a plan.
  • Workshop Checklist prepares a complete sequence of tasks which are supposed to be completed within a definite time.
  • The ready checklist is the final stage when all the previous tasks must be completed prior delivery of the product.

Agile test plan sample template

Before explaining a sample agile test plan please convince you on the need for an agile test plan.

Though a lot of test plan templates are available online for free download, Still one can make his/her own agile test plan template depending on one’s necessity by considering the following.

  • Agile test plan design
  • Agile test plan description
  • Agile test summary.

Preparing a proper introduction is the first step in making a test plan template. In this section, fundamental inputs regarding the agile test plan may be listed as mentioned below.

Need for the agile test, contextual inputs, agile test range, etc.

The second step in agile test plan design is the agile test tactics and procedures. In this section, details regarding the agile test procedure and sequences are listed. 

Here is an agile test plan template for you to download:

Download the template

Another template to test individual user stories in agile:

Download here

For example

Name of the test: __, Responsibilities: __; Date of the test: __, Outcome of the test: __; etc.

The last step in agile test plan is the QA team’s functions and tasks. In this section, the functions and tasks of developers and testers are listed. As far as agile testing is considered, everyone must converse and come together to make sure the quality is preserved while maintaining the process of the software programming.

References

  1. Role of testers in agile projects
  2. Agile testing guide
  3. Agile test plan template 1
  4. Agile test plan template 2
  5. Master Test Plan Template
  6. Overview of Agile testing – Lisa Crispin

 

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