Everything You Need to Know About Agile Test Planning
Tags: agile, testing, automation, tutorial
Published: 2023-04-28 09:24:39

Every innovative business using a [Mobile app testing platform](https://www.headspin.io/solutions/mobile-app-testing) has shown some interest in embracing agile. No matter how sophisticated an organization is, it’s easy to crumble under the burden of poor and efficient systems or compromised collaboration and coordination among teams. The benefits of making the shift to agile are undeniable.

For instance, agile principles and practices offer increased visibility for the business. As businesses grow, the complexity increases, and anything with a greater complexity tends to slow down. While most forms drive their focus on speed while adopting agile, they can’t succeed without a plan.

One of the most widely proliferating misconceptions regarding agile is that you can succeed with it without any strategic planning. While you can certainly cut down a little bit on the planning duration, it’s impossible to ignore it completely. Instead of planning everything in the beginning with traditional development approaches, agile involves making a plan in small chunks. This post will take a detailed look at everything you need to know about agile test planning. Let’s dive right in.

## Do We Need An Agile Test Plan?
Test planning works are different levels. We leverage the principles of simplicity and iterative development and ask what kind of data information or knowledge the teams in charge made at different levels.

So, we need an agile test plan since planning is one of the most important activities during a product’s life cycle. However, it’s essential to see it as something ongoing rather than a strategy to be done within the beginning itself. When we talk about an Agile framework, planning to be evolutionary by keeping changes retrospective and making frequent updates is a must.

The core value is responding to change as far as the agile manifesto is concerned. While it’s true that an over comprehensive document might not do much, having strategic responses to change can go a long way.

## How Does An Agile Test Plan Work?
In agile, when a sprint begins, it is not necessary to know every detail about the feature and Epic beforehand. Sometimes, it might not seem straightforward and predictable. Understanding the different complexities can help shape testing efforts if that is the case. However, when things are unknown or new, complications can arise. Such a scenario can make coming up with relevant information challenging.

Before a sprint, the team starts out by discussing the contents that are a part of the release. This way, the testing team has an idea of the scope of testing in advance and what you should consider for the test.

Once you are through with the contents comes the discussion about estimates. So, testers have an idea of the duration it will take to test a feature. It includes performance, exploratory testing, test automation, test scenarios, and the setup of the test environment.

## Understanding Epic, Feature, Task, and User Story
A detailed understanding of the terms Epic, Feature, Task, and User Story is necessary when working towards creating a brilliant testing plan for software. They are a crucial part of the Scrum framework and comprise details testing teams must take into account during the planning phase. It’s also crucial to keep the bigger picture of the entire product intact. These terms are known for their unique precision levels.

### Epic
In simple terms, Epic is a broad spectrum goal that needs simplifications by dividing it into different chunks of tasks the agile team needs to work on. It’s next to impossible to achieve a big story, that is, Epic, in one stroke since it usually takes a few months. Since they have a broad end scope, epics lack details.

Business requirements, customer requests, and product features come under epic. The Epic size also depends on the overall culture of your organization. Knowing they shouldn’t take too long to finish is essential. That doesn’t mean you hasten things up. It is a wise move to use burn-down charts for measuring epics. It offers precise estimates of the quantum of work you need to complete.

### Feature
Feature refers to a cluster of user stories representing a functionality’s business capability. It can take many iterations to finally complete. You must ensure that these functional and non-functional user stories are highly testable. This will get the team involved in a pattern of coding each story and testing it out until the feature is complete.

### Task
Detailed work pieces necessary for completing a user story are known as tasks. Team members can take them up depending on their expertise and skill levels. No user story can be completed until you complete every task under a particular story. Usually, development teams define a task, and it takes almost a day to finish.

### User Story
User stories are a to-do checklist comprising items the testing team needs to complete. The scrum product owner owns the user stories, stakeholders, the Scrum master, and the entire team act as contributors to eliminating backlogs. The idea around which user stories revolve is to break a product into pieces to complete a large project successfully. Tracking user stories is easily possible, even on multiple boards.

It’s essential to remember that user stories are simple, short, and crisp descriptions you need to cover throughout an agile project. Even though the product owner is the owner of user stories, any member can write them.

## Conclusion
Writing proper epics, tasks and stories are crucial for a clear picture of responsibilities, roles, reasons, and requirements. When in line, these three sprint foundations help accomplish goals quickly and precisely.

One of the most apparent goals for having these Agile planning sessions is to enhance learning and adaptation with the help of faster and more efficient feedback. Once you get a hold of how all the planning sessions work, they take less time and become more effective in the future.

There is this mindset in the testing and Development industry to have all the information upfront before making a plan. While this has been how things are for ages, it is time for a change in planning and development. Even though the approach is different and takes some getting used to, it is always rewarding when the end product comes out better.

Source: This aricle was originally published at [www.companionlink.com](https://www.companionlink.com/blog/2022/11/everything-you-need-to-know-about-agile-test-planning/)