Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to turn a short, basic description of a feature into a comprehensive feature specification. That is one small step away from the test plan you need to guide all your testing.

You’ve seen the strengths and weaknesses of a specification and the other types of documents in a project. Many of those complement the feature specification, but none fully replace it, and it’s the feature specification you need to base your test plan on.

We’ve covered the journey of a specification, from the initial handover from the product owner to how to structure the document in terms of numbering and sections, then the vital guidelines to writing requirement statements. They need to be specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, complete, consistent, independent, and contain no implementation details.

There’s a lot to remember, but once you’ve mastered the style, it’s simple enough to work through the many areas of...