Test Plan Template

A test plan is a documented plan for testing the software and system implemented in a specific project.

It is helpful to start with a template or follow a test plan that has been prepared for similar projects. Here is a nice simple test plan template that has proved very useful, or has been adapted, for many of my projects at various companies. The structure is consistent with the IEEE 829 Standard for Software Test Documentation. For more info on this standard, consult the IEEE 829 article in Wikipedia.

The reason for providing a separate Notes document with instructions and a specific example instead of incorporating instructions into the template is that very often instructions in a template are not removed, and hence end up appearing in the final test plan!

The Notes document also provides background explanations of the parts of a test plan and some notes on using templates based on Microsoft Word. This type of documentation is often missing in the resource libraries of QA teams.