A Case Study in Early Test Planning Let's look at an example of how early and iterative test planning on a project

identified a number of important questions early on. On the Internet appliance project, which I've mentioned a few times in this book, I sent two drafts of the test plan, each with questions embedded. figure 3-31 shows the email cover letter sent with the first draft. These drafts served to stimulate discussion and resolution of issues, both in emails and in meetings. In the next few pages, I'll show you some specific examples of the questions I raised in the draft test plan.

shows a question I raised about the prioritization of hardware-related quality risks. I am asking Ed, Qadeer, and Greg to provide priority of the quality risks shown and perhaps to add some additional quality risks. This question was critical to determining the order in which hardware tests would be run. (Due to space limitation, there are a number of quality risks that are not shown in this figure.) figure 3-33 shows three test-environment questions. The first has to do with the number of units required for the product verification test, which was the highest level of hardware testing, the last test level prior to declaring the hardware done. I was asking for clarification as to whether we would accept testing of hand-built engineering samples. I was fairly certain that the answer would be,"No, we must use production line units", but I wanted to be sure.

The second question has to do with the location of the test lab and the people who would be involved in configuring and supporting it.
Figure 3-32. Quality risk priority question

The third question has to do with the number of test units needed. Mean time between failure tests are notorious for tying up hardware resources. Accelerated life tests not only tie up hardware resources, but, because they push the resources until failure, they actually result in a depletion of test resources. I'm asking here for Greg and Qadeer to confirm my thinking on these numbers.

shows some questions I had related to test design. First, I described my current thinking on the architecture and components required for server-side testing, at a high level. Next, I asked two questions. For the two senior development managers/architects, Jamie and Wayne, I asked for some time to discuss with them and the mail software vendor how we should finalize the server-side test architecture and components. For the two decision makers who would approve my test budget, Greg and Ken, I asked for approval to include pricing for COTS test tools in my budget.