Question

I’m trying to establish more formal requirements and testing procedures then we have now, but I can’t find any good reference examples of documents involved.

At the moment, after feature freeze testers “click through the application” before deployment, however there are no formal specification what needs to be tested.

First, I’m thinking about a document which specifies every feature that needs to be tested, something like this (making this up):

1. user registration form
   1. country dropdown (are countries fetched from the server correctly?)
   2. password validation (are all password rules observed, is user notified if password is too weak?)
2. thank-you-for-registration

…and so on. This could also serve as something client can sign as a part of requirements before programmers start coding. After the feature list is complete, I’m thinking about making this list a first column in a spreadsheet which also says when was the feature last tested, did it work, and if it didn’t work how did it break. This would give me a document testers could fill after each testing cycle, so that programmers have to-do list, with information what doesn’t work and when did it break.

Secondly, I’m thinking of test cases for testers, with detailed steps like:

1. Load user registration form.
2. (Feature 1.1) Check country dropdown menu.
   1. Is country dropdown populated with countries?
   2. Are names of countries localized?
   3. Is the sort order correct for each language?
3. (Feature 1.2) Enter this passwords: “a”, “bob”, “password”, “password123”, “password123#”. Only the last password should be accepted.
4. Press “OK”.
5. (Feature 2) Check thank-you note.
   1. Is the text localized to every supported language?

This would give testers specific cases and checklist what to pay attention to, with pointers to the features in the first document. This would also give me something to start automating testing process (currently we don’t have much testing automation apart from unit tests).

I’m looking for some examples how others have done this, without too much paperwork. Typically, tester should be able to go through all tests in an hour or two. I’m looking for a simple way to make client agree on which features should we implement for the next version, and for testers to verify that all new features are implemented and all existing features are working, and report it to programmers.

This is mostly internal testing material, which should be a couple of Word/Excel documents. I’m trying to keep one testing/bugfixing cycle under two days. I’m tracking programming time, implementation of new features and customer tickets in other ways (JIRA), this would basically be testing documentation. This is lifecycle I had in mind:

1. PM makes list of features. Customer signs it. (Document 1 is created.)
2. Test cases are created. (Document 2.)
3. Programmers implement features.
4. Testers test features according to test cases. (And report bugs through Document 1.)
5. Programmers fix bugs.
6. GOTO 4 until all bugs are fixed.
7. End of internal testing; product is shown to customer.

Does anyone have pointers to where some sample documents with test cases can be found? Also, all tips regarding the process I outlined above are welcome. 🙂

Answer 1

ive developed two documents i use.

one is for your more ‘standard websites’ (e.g. business web presence):

http://pm4web.blogspot.com/2008/07/quality-test-plan.html

the other one i use for web-based applications:

http://pm4web.blogspot.com/2008/07/writing-system-test-plan.html

hope that helps.