Ministry of Testing launched a LinkedIn newsletter at the start of 2023. Each newsletter article has got a lot of attention which is awesome. Each one celebrates someone in the community who has produced something that’s been published on the MoT platform. Written by me or @sarahdeery – based on our own interpretations and experiences.
So I thought, why not bring them onto The Club to spark conversations, share ideas, celebrate and debate?
Three Reasons Why Your Test Plan Is Failing
Documenting a test plan can be complicated. When tasked with putting one together there are many ways to do it and it can feel overwhelming. While there are many approaches, there are a small number of common reasons why a test plan fails to do what it’s supposed to do. Here are three reasons why your test plan is failing.
1. It’s too long
What happens if I don’t include that? Surely it’s better to add it than to omit it and get caught out later? Possibly not. It’s completely understandable to put certain information in a test plan just to be on the safe side. Yet how frustrating is it to find that not many key stakeholders have read it? That’s a missed opportunity to solicit their important feedback. Time is precious and it’s time to get to the point — the most important things first — and consider the detail for later.
2. Your target audience is unclear
Who are you sharing your test plan with and for what reason? Who is the target audience? Often the test plan is shared with too many stakeholders each with different needs – and in turn, the test plan doesn’t land well with any of those stakeholders. Or it’s not shared with anyone under the premise that “it’s just useful to me”. It’s a missed opportunity to not solicit feedback and ideas from key stakeholders. Tailor each edition of the test plan to a specific audience.
3. It’s not actioned focused
What is your test plan informing you and others of what will happen, and in what order? Sometimes a test plan is written for the sake of documenting something and doesn’t state why something is important, how and who will do what and by when. Is a test plan useful if it isn’t action-focused? How does it motivate and inspire yourself and others to take action?
This! Very this! I find a lack of engagement when people don’t understand “what’s in this for me”. If you’re writing to a template or something overly verbose then you haven’t considered your audience. The test plan needs to tell people what are they getting, where they can get things and how it’ll happen in an easy to digest way.
I’ve been talking about selling testing into projects recently and one of the big things I recommend is to ensure you tailor a message and make it meaningful/useful to people. These days the structure I use is:
Who, the actions I and others need to undertake for testing.
What, the risks identified in the project that we should address.
Where, the locations test artefacts can be found (jira, confluence, wiki, repos).
When, the testing activities that take place through the SDLC (Triforce at story refinement?).
Why, optional section to justify my recommendations for tools and techniques.
How, the tools and techniques we’ll use in testing.
Then I make sure to have links to reference or explanatory pages, so as not to make my test plan too verbose.
Hi @simon_tomes and @cakehurstryan , very good points and i agree to all. I could relate more to the points under ‘Its not action focused’ and i liked the the points on the structure to use by @cakehurstryan
Other reasons that immediately spring to my mind on why a Test Plan can fail
Not aligning to the overall Test Policy and Test strategy
Not applying enough thought when drafting the test approach, Risks with Mitigating actions, Assumptions , and Dependencies with Owners and when it should be fulfilled by.
Drafting the plan independently without consulting or working with the team - people on the ground.
To bring this topic back to life… I am liking this one-page approach more and more. We live in a world with too much information and we all know this axiom:
So having a one-page plan (possibly even one-page strategy) is a great way of extracting the bare essentials of what we’re trying to convey, while keeping the time investment by everyone to a minimum needed.
