What are documents required for Software Testing?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by VINAY SAXENA on November 27, 2010 at 2:22pm

traceability matrix -

By using this, we verify whether our test cases are covering all requirements or not.

Permalink Reply by Ammad Alam on November 27, 2010 at 2:32pm

Well to make you clear the documents you mentioned test Plan, test Case, checklist and bug reporting are not the documents that are required for testing something.

Test Plan document is something where you describe your testing strategies. whether manual, automated or any other.in this you will describe the resource allocation and any other risk factor involved in testing. it may contain the number of testing cycle you will perform, how you will perform your regression testing to which extent.
As per IEEE 829 test plan structure is as follows.
* Test plan identifier
* Introduction
* Test items
* Features to be tested
* Features not to be tested
* Approach
* Item pass/fail criteria
* Suspension criteria and resumption requirements
* Test deliverables
* Testing tasks
* Environmental needs
* Responsibilities
* Staffing and training needs
* Schedule
* Risks and contingencies
* Approvals

Similarly test case are the scenarios you write to test a product whether before testing or during testing. Checklist for what you do while doing peer reviews.

The Other documents that you may need while testing is of course the Functional Design document if it exists. it will be a great benefit for a tester if he looks into the technical specification document of a product. RS document. The User Manuals, release Notes.Customer Feed back documents these all are very help full in test planning.

well it vary from organization to organization. The org' that are at a certain level of CMMI spent a lot time while creating such documents but some org' take these as an overhead and as a burden to software development.

The testing process is pretty much simple. You or the tester/QA lead will write the test plan at the project kick off and share it with the stake holders. he will also responsible to create a test bed for the team. The resource are then assigned to the project. Estimation will then done how much for test case writing, analyzing, test data preparation and how much for testing. The testing schedule will then be made by coordinating with Development team and published to the team. You then read the functional specs, RS, Technical specs etc to write the test cases nad create the test data. or write some checklist. after you received the shipments in QA you start test the product. while testing you or the team lead will create a daily testing status report. in which the progress of testing is mentioned or any other risk factor or issues. Once the testing is being done then it will be decided whether to execute an other testing cycle or not. After the complete testing the final testing status report created, The defects report created, The test specification document created and the test cases updated in the requirement irascibility matrix.

Permalink Reply by Zahid Bashir Bajwa on November 29, 2010 at 11:12am

Ammad,
Good to see your active participation over the forum....Much appreciated. I second every bit of your detailed reply......

Brother, It i good to have knowledge of the whole IDEAL process and all the documentation required for. BUT in a mode like more than AGILE everywhere these days; the first compromise companies / Managers / Decision Makers use to do is to avoid hell of documentation and maintain the pace which suits client and industry.. though I am a great Fan of Good / effective documentation.

Regards,
Zahid.

Permalink Reply by VINAY SAXENA on November 29, 2010 at 11:30am

Zahid,

I'm agree with you.