Test plan vs Test strategy

Test plan

Test plan is a document that describes project specific information. Test planning is a continuous activity and is performed throughout a product's lifecycle as more information become available and more detailes can be added to the test plan.

In test plan can be documented:

1. Objectives
2. Scope (what to test and what not to test)
3. Schedule
4. Resources (people/software/test environment)
5. Approach
6. Types of testing (functional and/or not functional)
7. Metrics
8. Risk (project or/and product)
9. Enter / Exit creteria

Test strategy

Test strategy provides a generalized description of a test process, usually on the organization level. It describes objectives for each activity in the software testing process. There could be described:

1. Roles and responsibilities
2. What type of testing are on a project (manual/automation/functional/non functional)
3. Approach to regression testing
4. Process of testing - what documentation create and where

Summary:

1 – in Agile teams test plan can be flexible, so no need to spend a lot of time for creating too detailed plan. Important data is: scope, deadlines of all activities, risks, responsible people

2 - Sometimes test strategy included in test plan.