Methods for risk-aware and collaborative test planning

The purpose of the study is to investigate the possibilities for streamlining test planning, testing and prioritization with principles from offensive quality development. These principles include working with processes, basing decisions on facts and working with continuous improvement. The study is based on analysis of documents from the Swedish Transport Administration and individual and group interviews with employees within the organization who have different links to test planning and testing. The results show that teams lack local documentation for processes and are dependent on specific competence and those employees who have high competence and long experience. The organization has documentation centrally that is comprehensive for test work, but there are deficiencies in documentation, risk assessment, division of responsibilities locally in the teams. The consequence is that duplication of work occurs, collaboration between different departments is impaired and prioritization and risk-based working methods are made difficult or do not exist at all. Several problem areas are identified in the analysis, these are: person dependency, lack of documentation, unstructured use of statistics, unclear division of responsibilities, lack of risk- based planning and varying degrees of automation. Suggestions for improvement that can address or minimize the impact of the shortcomings are to work in a structured way with continuous improvement and documentation of processes. With a RACI-matrix, the division of responsibilities can be clarified and with the PDSA cycle, the improvement work can be driven in a structured way. Effective test planning requires that the methodology and teams are given structured support in the form of models and tools which can result in increased efficiency, better collaboration and higher quality.