Test Planning and Management Guide - Updated

The ‘Test Release Management Guidance’, since its first release in early 2012, has been a great resource that lays down guidance about important questions pertinent to Manual Test Planning, such as:

• What are best practices, based on project size or development methodology?
• How do I structure my test plans?
• How do I organize my test cases across different types of test suites?
• How do I generate appropriate reports per release?
• How do I carry forward test assets to future sprints and releases?

Today, I’m excited to announce a new version of this guide, that, in addition to focusing on the core aspects of test planning, also touches upon new product improvements to Manual Testing with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. You can download the guide by clicking here (or visit the Test Planning and Management Guide page). Notable additions to the guide include:

• Introduction to the cross-platform, web-based Test Hub in Team Web Access on TFS/Visual Studio Online
• Updates to guidance, incorporating product updates, on topics like ‘Acceptance Testing’, ‘Exporting Test Plans’, ‘Test Reporting with customizable Test Charts’, ‘Shared Parameters’ and more
• Demonstration videos on Channel 9 that walk you through the hands-on labs with great commentary:
  
  • Test Planning Overview
  • Test Reporting and Metrics
  • Sprint to Sprint Test Planning
  • Release to Release Test Planning
  • UAT with Test Hub

If you are new to this guide, I’d like to emphasize that you’ll find this guide a useful resource for activities such as:

• Creating test plans and organizing test cases into suites to track testing of user stories/requirements 
• Managing test plans across sprints and releases
• Setting up regression testing and acceptance testing scenarios
• Reviewing Test Plans with stakeholders
• Creating insightful reports that reflect test progress

It’s the Rangers team that has played a pivotal role in contributing content to the original guide, as well as, creating this updated version. Their in-depth understanding of the testing domain and expertise with Visual Studio Testing Tools has been invaluable in shaping this guide. I’d like to thank the Rangers Team (Bob Hardister, Dan Marzolini, David V. Corbin, Derek Keeler, Doug Owens, Hassan Fadili, Michael Pedersen, Niel Zeeman, Oscar Garcia Colon, and Tim Star) for all their contributions. Special thanks to Mattias Sköld and Willy-Peter Schaub for their passion and energy in driving the team that created this updated version.

Finally, you’ll notice that the updated guidance document has been titled ‘Test Planning and Management Guide’. We’ve rebranded the guide to minimize the ambiguities with the Visual Studio Release Management product family, which this guide does not cover.

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