What comprises Test Ware Development : Test Plan - System test Plan

The system test plan is the overall plan carrying out the system test level activities. In the system test, apart from testing the functional aspects of the system, there are some special testing activities carried out, such as stress testing etc. The following are the sections present in system test plan:

- What is to be tested?
This section defines the scope of system testing, very specific to the project. Normally, the system testing is based on the requirements. All the requirements are to be verified in the scope of the system testing. This covers the functionality of the product. Apart from this, what special testing is performed are also stated here.

- Functional groups and the sequence
The requirements can be grouped in terms of the functionality. Based on this, there may be priorities also among the functional groups. For example, in a banking application, anything related to customer accounts can be grouped into one area, anything related to inter-branch transactions may be grouped into one area etc.

- Special Testing Methods
This covers the different special tests like load/volume testing, stress testing, interoperability testing etc. These testing are to be done based on the nature of the product and it is not mandatory that every one of these special tests must be performed for every product.

Apart from above sections, the following sections are also addressed:
- System Testing Tools
- Priority of functional groups
- Naming Convention for test cases
- Status reporting mechanism
- Regression test approach
- ETVX criteria
- Build/Refresh Criteria