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What is Test Policy? What does it contain?

Every organization has its own nomenclature and scope for test documents created for test management. Test Policy is one of the key documents that exists in an organization. These are some of the broad categories of documents that exist in every testing project.

• Test Policy – It explains the goals that the organization wishes to achieve through testing activities.
• Test Strategy – This document details the general testing methods used by the organization. These test methods are independent of any project.
• Master Test Plan – Also called the project test plan, it explains project specific testing strategy and test implementation.
• Level Test Plan – Also referred as the phase test plan, this document gives details about the testing activities that must be performed for every test level.

Actual existence of each of these documents is different for each project and/or organizations. For larger projects / organizations, they could possibly be split across multiple documents, however for smaller projects/organizations, they could possibly be part of a single document. Every document is explained in detail here.

Larger organizations which are more formal and larger projects have more detailed documents compared to smaller, less formal organizations & smaller projects.

Test Policy

The overarching objective of an organization in performing test activities is described in Test Policy document. It is created by seniors in the test management team in association with senior managers of the stakeholders’ groups.

Sometimes, test policy is part of a wider quality policy adopted by the organization. In such cases the quality policy will explain the overall aim of the management with respect to quality.

Test policy contents

Test policy is a short document, summarized at a high level that contains the following:

• Outline the advantages of testing, business value delivered to the organization which justifies the cost of quality
• Define test objectives like confidence building, defect detection and reduce quality risks
• Describe the methods to measure test efficiency and effectiveness in fulfilling test objectives
• Summarize the processes used in testing using ISTQB primary test process
• Describe ways for the organization to enhance its testing processes

Test policy must also include testing activities necessary for maintenance of current project & also development of new projects.

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