Proper and effective documentation work plays a vital role in carrying out any sort of process, either development or testing in an efficient manner for its success. Test strategy and test plans are few of the important testing artifacts, which works as a manual or a guide to direct the testing phase to achieve success in obtaining the desired quality product.
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Let's have a look over, some of the features of test strategy and test plan, which makes both the terms, distinguishable to each other.
| Test Strategy | Test Plan |
| 1.A high level document, which defines the overall approach and standards to carry out the testing task. | 1. It is a documented artifact, which describes the design of a testing phase and accordingly, derives planning, consisting of resources and efforts to be required in order to perform testing. |
| 2.Generally, includes objectives, scope, procedure, risk analysis, roles and responsibilities, project cost, deadlines, etc. | 2. It usually comprises of test data items, functionalities and features to be tested, test environment, testing techniques, "entry, exit and acceptance criteria", test schedules, etc. |
| 3.It is designed and developed by the project manager or the Business analyst. | 3.Generally, a test manager or a test lead is responsible for designing and creating the test plans. |
| 4. Business requirement specifications works as a base to create a test strategy. | 4. It is derived from the software requirement specifications (SRS) & use case documents. |
| 5. Test strategy is a static document i.e. once defined, it cannot be changed. | 5. It is usually, a dynamic type of documentation, which may be modified during the course of testing in proportion to needs and requirements. |
| 6. It's a general approach to execute the testing task. | 6. It is a specific approach or method based on the software product requirements and specifications. |
| 7. There may be only one strategy for a software product/project. However, depending on the project size, complexity and other various factors, an organization may adopt more than one strategy to execute the testing task. | 7.Test plans may be created in multiple numbers for each level of the testing phase. |
| 8. A test strategy may be adopted for other projects of similar nature. | 8.Test plans may not be used for other software products, as it is strictly prepared for a particular software product based on its functionalities, attributes and other aspects. |
| 9. Test strategy may be seen as a subset of the test plan, especially in the smaller projects. | 9. Each test plan exists, individually. |
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