11.1. Reviewing Your Test Plan and Goals

Before the team members bury themselves in preparation, it makes sense at this point to go back and revisit the original test plan as well as the goals that drove testing in the first place. In particular, the team needs to ask itself the following questions:

• Are we positioned to actually meet our goals?

• Are our success criteria still valid?

• Are we testing the right things—the right business processes, within the right test mixes, against the right data?

• Does the state of our test infrastructure help or hinder us?

• Did we select the right testing and monitoring tools?

• Overall, what kind of course corrections do we need to take to stay on track?

I suggest taking the most candid approach possible in evaluating and truthfully answering these questions. If you're off track, or things have morphed into something much different than what was envisioned, step back and re-evaluate. For instance, if you couldn't script the real business processes you hoped for, and instead had to go with “plan B” transactions, make sure this truly is acceptable. Similarly, if you had problems replicating your Production environment and had to make compromises in your test-bed, ensure these changes are also acceptable. And, if you haven't done so yet, get the necessary buy-in from all stakeholders—the business representatives, senior business and IT management, and so on—to again verify that you're not wasting everyone's time before moving forward.

Next, concentrate on the tasks remaining to be completed, most of which are discussed in the balance of this chapter. Even though I depend on a real project plan about half the time at this stage in a load-testing project, I still like to put together a custom checklist that reflects each remaining task and timeline—this helps me stay focused. And my simple checklist is easy to share, is easy to stay on top of, and makes for a great way to hold razor-sharp in-and-out meetings. Finally, by using the checklist to capture and document status updates, it becomes the de facto method of sharing updates with others as well—with the technical team, business groups, IT management, and more.