Test Strategy Design Skill
Purpose
Enable the QA Lead Agent to define the overall approach to quality assurance for a project, ensuring all risks are mitigated through appropriate testing.
Test Pyramid Strategy
Based on Mike Cohn's Test Pyramid:
- •Unit Tests (70%): Component level, fast, isolated. (Dev responsibility)
- •Integration Tests (20%): API level, service interaction. (Dev/QA responsibility)
- •E2E / UI Tests (10%): User journey, slow, fragile. (QA responsibility)
Test Plan Components
1. Scope
- •In Scope: Modules, browsers (Chrome, Safari), devices (iOS, Android).
- •Out of Scope: Performance (unless specified), third-party system internals.
2. Testing Types
- •Functional: Sanity, Smoke, Regression.
- •Non-Functional: Performance, Security, Accessibility, Usability.
3. Environment Strategy
- •Dev: Unstable, for unit tests.
- •QA/Staging: Stable, mirror of Prod, for functional/regression.
- •Prod: For smoke tests / monitoring.
4. Data Strategy
- •Synthetic data generation?
- •Anonymized prod dump?
- •Hardcoded test users?
Automation Framework Design
Selection Criteria
- •Tech Stack: Playwright (JS/TS), Selenium (Java/Python), Cypress (JS).
- •CI/CD Integration: Github Actions, Jenkins.
- •Reporting: Allure, HTML reports.
Best Practices
- •Page Object Model (POM): Separation of page structure from tests.
- •Atomic Tests: Each test is independent.
- •Data Driven: Separate data from logic.
Risk-Based Testing
Prioritize testing based on:
- •Impact: What happens if this fails? (Financial loss, data loss?)
- •Probability: How likely is it to fail? (New complex code vs. old stable code).
Deliverables
- •Master Test Plan (MTP).
- •Test Case Suite.
- •Defect Reports.
- •Test Summary Report.