Truth About Test Plan Documents
– 98% of test plan documents that are created are not updated, maintained or cared beyond sign off.
– The first 5 pages of a test plan document contains history that doesn’t interest even those whose names are mentioned in it.
– Scope of testing section is the most funniest part of the whole document. Some times when testers report serious problems, some people cite it as out of scope. Hey, its still in the product.
– Customers worldwide could have saved millions of dollars if their vendors didn’t care about creating test plan documents.
– 4 years into a project, nobody knows about the test plan document.
– No matter how stupid or intelligent the test plan document is, testers still write the test case they want to write.
– A simple maintainable test plan document is far superior than a detailed test plan document.
– Some test plan documents are written in a way that it is obsolete in its first draft itself.
Truth About Test Case Documents
– ~ 90% of testers haven’t bothered to think why there is a “case” in “test case”.
– For most people on earth, a test case means a test idea that is documented.
– The expected results column in test case documents are a copy paste of requirements document / stories. So much money goes into re-writing the requirements document into expected results column.
– If you are already laughing at test case documentation, you may roar to a bigger laughter at trace ability matrix.
– Most traditional testing services projects have 50% of their project duration spent on writing test cases. The team members in such projects complain unavailability of time to “actually” test the product. No wonder.
– More than 99% ( yeah, more than 99%) testers I have met have passed a test case (or a bunch of them) without actually executing it. – Test case documents are actually “Check case” documents.
– Businessmen love test case documentation. Testers hate it. Businessmen hire testers to write documentation. Testers trade their time for money, end up writing documentation for money.
– Test case pass percentage is a great way to fool stakeholders. People love to be fooled.
– I personally can write test case documentation for any buggy product and make it look like a bug free product.
– If all test case documents created so far were printed and burnt, we’d have fire for the next one thousand years.
– If you rate testers based on how many test cases they write per day, you’d always find people who can meet the number you want them to achieve.
– Some projects have great test case documents and no time to run them all.
The point here is, just having a test plan and test case is not enough. It should be in such a format that it is usable and re-usable and always alive. Some may call it green.
This has been extracted from Pradeep Soundararajans blog.
For complete list http://testertested.blogspot.in/2011/12/truth-about-test-plan-document-test.html
