What comprises Test Ware Development : Test Plan - Integration Test Plan

The integration test plan is the overall plan for carrying out the activities in the integration test level, which contains the following sections:

- What is to be tested?
This section clearly specifies the kinds of interfaces fall under the scope of testing internal, external interfaces, with request and response is to be explained. This need not go deep in terms of technical; details but the general approach how the interfaces are triggered.

- Sequence of Integration
When there are multiple modules present in an application, the sequence in which they are to be integrated will be specified in this section. In this, the dependencies between the modules play a vital role. If a unit B has to be executed, it may need the data that is fed by unit A and unit X. In this case, the units A and X have to be integrated and then using the data, the unit B has to be tested. This has to be stated to the whole set of units in the program. Given this correctly, the testing activities will lead to the product, slowly building the product, unit by unit and then integrating them.

- List of modules and interface functions
There may be N number of units in the application but the units that are going to communicate with each other, alone are tested in this phase. If the units are designed in such a way that they are manually independent, then the interfaces do not come into picture.This is almost impossible in any system, as the units have to communicate to other units, in order to get different types of functionalities executed. In this section, we need to list the units and for what purpose it talks to the others needs to be mentioned. This will not go into technical aspects, but at a higher level, this has to be explained in plain English.

Apart from above sections, it also includes:
- Integration Testing Tools
- Priority of Program Interfaces
- Naming Convention for test cases
- Status reporting mechanism
- Regression test approach
- ETVX criteria
- Build/Refresh criteria.