A test strategy is a statement of the overall approach to testing, identifying what levels of testing
are to be applied and the methods, techniques and tools to be used. A test strategy should ideally
be organization wide, being applicable to all of organizations software developments.
Developing a test strategy, which efficiently meets the needs of an organization, is critical to the
success of software development within the organization. The application of a test strategy to a
software development project should be detailed in the projects software quality plan.
The next stage of test design, which is the first stage within a software development project, is the
development of a test plan. A test plan states what the items to be tested are, at what level they
will be tested, what sequence they are to be tested in, how the test strategy will be applied to the
testing of each item, and describes the test environment.
A test plan may be project wide, or may in fact be a hierarchy of plans relating to the various levels
of specification and testing:
Unit Test Plan(s), describing the plans for testing of individual units of software. These may form part of the Detailed Design Specifications.
The objective of each test plan is to provide a plan for verification, by testing the software, that the
software produced fulfils the requirements or design statements of the appropriate software
specification. In the case of acceptance testing and system testing, this means the Requirements
Specification.
