CS 480 / CS 481 ~ PROJECT
TEST PLAN GUIDELINES
The purpose of the Test Plan is to provide a description of all testing
activities to be performed on your product. This includes (as appropriate)
testing at the unit or component level, testing during subsystem and system
integration, and testing of the completed system. You will perform most of
the testing yourself, however, you are required to conduct a Beta Testing
activity with someone other than yourself doing the testing. You may also
want to have the customer or end user perform some testing.
Testing is performed for at least two reasons. The first and most important
reason is to find defects in the code that could cause problems for the user.
The second reason is to show that your product implements the
requirements and that it works as intended under specified conditions.
Remember that testing cannot PROVE that your product will always function
correctly. Even after a significant amount of testing there can still be
obscure defects that haven't been encountered. Through a comprehensive
and effectively implemented testing process you want to reduce the risk of
significant defects going undetected and you want to build customer and
user confidence that the product will perform as intended.
As with other documents required in this course, please follow the outline
provided. If a particular section or subsection is not appropriate for your
project, include the section or subsection and then indicate a response such
as "none" or "not applicable."
The following is an outline template for your System Test Plan.
Title Page Your Test Plan must include a title page indicating the name of the
document, the project, the author, and the date prepared.
1.0 Purpose In this section provide a very brief statement of purpose that
will indicate what information is contained in the document.
2.0 Overall Testing Approach In this section briefly describe the testing
approach you will use on your project. This should include how you will test
individual functions, modules, or components, how you plan to combine or
integrate modules to form larger collections of code to test, and how you will
generally approach testing at the system level. Be sure to indicate how you
will ensure that your testing will provide a comprehensive exercising of the
entire product and will have a high probability of finding defects that could
cause problems for the user. You may find it appropriate to do risk-based
testing. In this approach you concentrate a greater percentage of testing on
portions of your system that are though to have greater potential for defects
