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Unit 10: Test Planning Fundamentals

6. Miscellaneous Supplies: Disks, phones, reference books, training material. And other things that
might be necessary during the course of the project.
The resource requirements are specific and depend on the project, team, and company. The test plan
needs to determine all the resources needed to test the software. Many a times it becomes difficult or
even impossible to obtain resources during the later part of the project. Hence, it is important to
consider and determine all the requirements when creating the list of resources.
10.6 Testing Schedule
Testing schedule is a document wherein all the execution dates, which are mapped to the overall project
schedule, are presented. It is very important to plan a schedule for all tests to know the likely start and
end dates for the testing process. Preparing test schedule also identifies those modules that were
considered easy to code and design, but may be very time consuming to test.
Assume that there are many menu options in an application. Many end users
may not frequently use some menu options. No one may appreciate the testing
effort that is put in testing such rarely used menu options This is because the
testing time for these menu options in the application could be many weeks.
Thus, creating a test schedule, as part of test planning, will present the project
manager with the information needed to schedule the testing appropriately.
Based on the testing schedule, this information can also be used to decide the
removal of certain menu options from the product or postponing their testing
to a later release, or adding more testers to complete the testing faster.

The extent of testing should not be distributed uniformly over the entire product development cycle.
Some testing takes place early in the form of specification and code reviews, tool development, and so
on. The number of testing tasks, the people involved, and the amount of time spent in testing increases
during the course of the project, with the peak being just before the product is released. Figure 10.2
shows what a typical test resource graph may look like.

Figure 10.2 A Typical Test Resource Graph

This gradual increase in the test effort indicates that the test schedule is influenced by prior happenings
in the project. Suppose that some part of the project is delivered to the test team one week late and only
two weeks were scheduled for testing, what happens then? Does this mean that the two weeks
scheduled for testing will now have to take place in only one week or does the project get delayed by
one week? This problem is known as schedule crunch.

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