test-planning

<objective> Create actionable test plans for sprints and releases. A test plan answers four questions: what to test, how deeply, who does it, and when it must be done. The output is a living document that tracks progress, not a bureaucratic artifact filed and forgotten. A plan that schedules 100% of available time fails the moment the first bug is found — buffer and prioritization are what make it survive contact with reality. </objective>

Quick Route

Situation	Go to
Plan a single sprint	Steps 1-6 below, then the 1-page sprint template in references/plan-documents.md
Plan a release	Release template in references/plan-documents.md; the go/no-go decision itself belongs to release-readiness
Track an in-flight plan / feed results back	references/tracking-formats.md (daily status + retrospective)
Decide what to cut when over capacity	Step 4 prioritization matrix

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Discovery Questions

Before writing a test plan, gather context. Check .agents/qa-project-context.md first -- if it exists, use it as the foundation and skip questions already answered there.

Scope

• What is the scope? (single sprint, release, hotfix, feature)
• Which features are new vs. changed vs. unchanged?
• Which features are being released for the first time?
• Are there infrastructure or dependency changes (database migrations, API version bumps, third-party provider switches)?
• Is there a requirements document, PRD, or set of user stories to map against?

Time and Resources

• What is the testing window? (days, hours available)
• Who is available for testing? (SDETs, manual testers, developers)
• Are there shared resources that could bottleneck? (staging environments, test accounts, devices)
• Is there a hard deadline that cannot move, or is the release date flexible?

Risk Context

• Which areas changed the most in this cycle?
• What broke in the last release or sprint?
• Are there known fragile areas or tech debt that increase risk?
• For risk-based prioritization methodology, see risk-based-testing.

Existing Coverage

• What automated tests already exist for the in-scope features?
• What is the current pass rate of the automated suite?
• Are there known gaps in automation that require manual testing?
• When was the last exploratory testing session on these features?

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Core Principles

1. Coverage-Driven: Map Every Requirement to at Least One Test

A test plan without traceability to requirements is a guess. Every user story, acceptance criterion, or requirement must map to at least one test case. Gaps in this mapping are untested requirements -- the most dangerous kind of risk.

2. Time-Boxed: Plan Fits the Available Window

Testing expands to fill available time if unbounded. Set a time box for each activity and stick to it. When the window is too short, the prioritization matrix determines what gets cut -- not gut feeling.

3. Prioritized: Not Everything Gets Equal Depth

A payment flow change and a tooltip fix do not deserve equal effort. Use the risk x effort matrix to allocate depth: some features get full regression, others a smoke test, some nothing if low-risk and unchanged.

4. Buffered: Leave Room for the Unexpected

Plans that schedule 100% of available time fail when bugs are found. Allocate only 70-80% of the testing window to planned work and explicitly reserve the remaining 20-30% for bug verification, re-testing, and unplanned investigation. If buffer is not a named line in the plan, you do not have one.

5. Visible: The Plan Is a Communication Tool

Developers need to know what gets tested to write testable code. Product managers need coverage visibility to make release decisions. Publish the plan where the team can see it.

6. Entry and Exit Criteria Are First-Class

The most-reused part of any plan is its gate. Make it explicit, not buried: entry = code-complete on staging + existing suite green + test data seeded; exit = every HIGH-risk area covered + no open P0/P1 + zero unexplained GAP rows in the coverage matrix. Everything else is detail around these two checkpoints.

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Workflow

The six workflow steps each have a fill-in-the-blank scaffold. The decision prose stays here; the copy-paste templates (decomposition, coverage matrix, estimation worksheet, prioritization matrix, allocation table, schedule) live in references/workflow-templates.md.

Step 1: Feature Analysis and Decomposition

Break each in-scope feature into testable units. A "testable unit" is a specific behavior that can be verified with a clear pass/fail outcome. Walk every feature against these scenario categories so none gets skipped:

• Happy path — the primary success flow.
• Validation — required fields empty, format violations, boundary values.
• Error conditions — server 5xx, network timeout, rejected input.
• Edge cases — unicode, oversized payloads, unsupported formats.
• Concurrency / race conditions — two users edit the same record simultaneously, double-submit, retry-after-timeout. These hide the worst data-corruption bugs and are the category most often missed.
• Integration points — behavior across each boundary the feature crosses.

See references/workflow-templates.md for the decomposition template and a worked "User Profile Edit" example that exercises all six categories.

AI decomposition cross-check. When an agent decomposes features, have it immediately map its own scenarios back against the Step 2 coverage matrix. Any requirement with no scenario, or any scenario category above with no entry, is a decomposition gap the agent must surface before estimation — this is how you catch the agent's blind spots, not after CI does.

Step 2: Requirements-to-Test Coverage Mapping

Create a traceability matrix that maps every requirement to its test cases. See references/workflow-templates.md for the coverage matrix template.

Rules for the coverage matrix:

• Every requirement must appear in the matrix (target: 100% mapping)
• "GAP" status triggers a decision: write a test, accept the risk, or defer
• Automated tests get test IDs that link to the actual test file/function
• Manual tests reference the test case document or charter

Step 3: Effort Estimation

Estimate effort for each test type using historical data. If no historical data exists, use the reference estimates below and calibrate after the first sprint.

Estimation reference (per test case):

Test Type	Write Time	Execute Time	Maintenance (per quarter)
Unit test	0.5 hr	< 1 sec	5 min
Integration test	1 hr	5-30 sec	15 min
E2E test (Playwright/Cypress)	2-3 hours	30s-2 min	30 min
Manual test case (write)	0.25 hr	5-15 min per execution	10 min
Exploratory session (charter)	15 min	1.5 hrs per session	N/A
Accessibility review (manual)	0.5-1 hr per area	included in write	15 min
Visual regression test	30-60 min	10-30 sec	20 min (baseline updates)
Performance test (k6 script)	2-4 hours	5-30 min per run	30 min
Prompt regression / LLM eval	30-60 min per case	30 sec - 2 min (with API cost)	20 min
Setup & test data (per feature)	0.5-2 hrs	one-time	re-seed per env

Write Time is authoring only. The "Setup & test data" row is the line planners most often omit — environment, fixtures, and mock configuration routinely run 20-40% of total effort, so budget it as a real line rather than discovering it mid-sprint.

AI authoring trade-off. Using an agent to author tests cuts Write Time by roughly 40-60%, but add a Review Time line of similar size per case — Bolton's "AI productivity paradox" (2026) is that the speed-up evaporates when an agent ships plausible-but-broken tests that pass a casual review and fail in CI. See ai-test-generation Step 7 for the review checklist and ai-qa-review for the smell taxonomy.

Test-smells review. ISTQB's CTAL-AT v2.0 (May 2026) names test smells as a planning concern. Budget a recurring 30-min "test-smells review" per sprint against the taxonomy in ai-qa-review — cheap, and it finds maintenance debt before it compounds.

Use the sprint estimation worksheet in references/workflow-templates.md to roll per-case estimates up to a capacity-utilization figure (target: 70-80%, leaving 20-30% buffer).

Step 4: Prioritization Matrix (Risk x Effort)

When the estimated effort exceeds available capacity (it usually does), use the risk x effort matrix to decide what to cut. See references/workflow-templates.md for the full matrix grid.

For each test case, plot it on the matrix using the risk score from risk-based-testing and the effort estimate from Step 3, then consume capacity in priority order: DO FIRST → DO SECOND → DO THIRD → DEFER → SKIP.

Tie-break rule: within HIGH risk, low-effort beats high-effort — a HIGH-risk / low-effort test (DO FIRST) outranks a HIGH-risk / high-effort test (DO THIRD), because it buys the most risk reduction per hour. Medium-risk items defer before you cut any HIGH-risk coverage; low-risk items defer or skip entirely. Never cut buffer to fit more planned work.

Step 5: Resource Allocation

Assign testing work based on skill match and availability.

Allocation principles:

• Automated test writing goes to SDETs or developers with framework experience
• Exploratory testing goes to the person who understands the feature best (often the developer or product manager, not just QA)
• New feature testing benefits from fresh eyes -- assign someone who did not build it
• Critical path testing should not have a single point of failure -- two people should be able to cover it
• Each person's load stays at 70-80% utilization, not 100% — the rest is their buffer
• Buffer is distributed per person, not lumped into one tester's block: every assignee carries their own buffer line so a blocker on one person does not consume everyone's slack

See references/workflow-templates.md for the allocation table format.

Step 6: Schedule with Buffers

Map testing activities to the sprint timeline. Testing should not be back-loaded to the last two days. See references/workflow-templates.md for the 2-week sprint schedule template.

Key scheduling rules:

• Testing starts as soon as features are code-complete, not at sprint end
• Environment setup and test data preparation happen on Day 1, not Day 3
• Bug verification is continuous, not batched
• The last day is for confirmation, not for starting new testing

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Plan Documents

Full copy-paste plan documents live in references/plan-documents.md:

• Sprint Test Plan (1-Page) — scope, coverage summary, effort budget, entry/exit criteria, plan risks. Keep a sprint plan to one page.
• Release Test Plan — aggregates sprint plans and adds release-specific concerns (full regression, cross-browser, perf benchmark, security scan, smoke test) plus go/no-go criteria. The go/no-go decision itself belongs to release-readiness.
• Feature Coverage Matrix — per-feature scenario list with priority, test type, location, and status.
• Test Estimation Worksheet — new-test development, existing-suite execution, manual testing, and a summary delta vs. available capacity.

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Tracking Progress During the Sprint

A test plan is useless if nobody checks it after Day 1. Track progress daily, and feed the results back into future planning at sprint end.

• Daily test status — completed, blocked, bugs found, tomorrow's plan, coverage percentage, and buffer consumed. See the format in references/tracking-formats.md.
• Sprint retrospective inputs — estimation accuracy broken out by test type, coverage delta, bug counts by severity, and lessons. See the format in references/tracking-formats.md; feed these data points into the next sprint's estimates.

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Anti-Patterns

Planning Without Risk Assessment

Treating every feature with equal depth wastes effort on low-risk areas and under-tests critical paths. Always run the prioritization matrix (Step 4) before allocating effort. For the full risk methodology, see risk-based-testing.

No Buffer for Bug Discovery

Scheduling 100% of available hours for planned activities leaves no time for verification when bugs are found. Reserve 20-30% as buffer and track consumption daily.

Back-Loading Testing to Sprint End

Leaving all testing for the last two days rushes coverage and surfaces bugs too late to fix. Start testing as features become available; continuous testing beats batch testing at sprint end.

Test Plan as Compliance Artifact

A 30-page plan filed and forgotten helps nobody. The plan should be one page for a sprint, actively tracked, and updated daily. If the plan is not changing, nobody is using it.

Estimating Without Historical Data

Effort estimates pulled from thin air are unreliable. Track actual time spent — broken out by test type — and use that data for future estimates. After 2-3 sprints, estimates become reliable.

Ignoring Environment and Data Setup

Environment setup, test data creation, and mock configuration can consume 20-40% of testing effort. Include the "Setup & test data" row from Step 3 in the estimate or the plan will always run over.

Single-Person Coverage on Critical Path

A single tester covering all critical-path work is a failure point. Ensure at least two people can cover critical-path testing.

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Verification

Open the produced plan and confirm: every in-scope ticket ID from the sprint board appears in the Scope table; the coverage matrix has zero unexplained GAP rows (each GAP carries an accept/defer note); allocated capacity sums to 70-80% with a named buffer line; and the entry/exit criteria checklists are filled, not placeholder. If any of these fails, the plan is not done.

Done When

• A sprint or release test plan document exists (1-page sprint template or release template) with scope table, coverage summary, effort budget, and entry/exit criteria all filled in — no placeholders
• Every in-scope feature is decomposed into specific testable scenarios with pass/fail criteria, covering happy path, validation, error, edge, and concurrency categories
• A requirements-to-test coverage matrix exists with no unexplained GAP entries (every GAP has an accept-risk or defer note)
• Each scenario is estimated and plotted on the risk x effort matrix, with deferred items explicitly listed
• Allocated capacity is 70-80% with 20-30% buffer explicitly reserved as a named line
• Test data requirements, environment details, and resource allocation are documented in the plan

Reference Files (in references/)

• workflow-templates.md — Fill-in scaffolds for the six workflow steps: decomposition template + example, coverage matrix, sprint estimation worksheet, risk×effort matrix grid, allocation table, and 2-week schedule.
• plan-documents.md — Full copy-paste documents: 1-page sprint test plan, release test plan, feature coverage matrix, and estimation worksheet.
• tracking-formats.md — Daily test status format and sprint retrospective inputs format (with per-test-type variance).

Related Skills

• test-strategy -- The broader QA strategy that test plans execute against; strategy defines the approach, plans implement it per sprint.
• risk-based-testing -- Deep methodology for risk assessment that feeds into the prioritization matrix in Step 4.
• release-readiness -- The go/no-go decision that the release test plan's exit criteria feed into; this skill builds the plan, that one makes the ship call.
• qa-metrics -- Metrics like defect escape rate and estimation accuracy that improve future test plans.
• exploratory-testing -- Structured exploratory sessions referenced in the manual testing sections of the plan.
• qa-project-context -- The project context file that provides baseline answers to discovery questions.