Jira test plan: A guide to getting started

One of the most critical blind spots that software teams often encounter during their release cycles is ‌poorly organized or unregulated test plans. Without a shared process for planning tests, you’re bound to get undetected errors, repeated testing, or lost connections.

Just imagine that you’ve planned a crucial product release with hundreds of user stories, and you cannot tell who tested requirements, who passed test cases, and who recorded bugs.

Sérgio Freire, Head of Solution Architecture & Testing Advocacy at Xray, notes that:

“Test planning allows you to decide your testing strategy, including the issues you want to validate [and] how to validate them…”

This post will go over how to use the Jira test management ecosystem to design, plan, and execute powerful, traceable test plans that you can leverage to support Agile development.

Does Jira have a test management tool?

No, Jira does not have a native test management tool. Although it’s used to manage issues, Agile project activities, and workflow automation, it lacks the structure for effective test case management, test prioritization, and reporting of test execution results. However, because Jira is extensible, you can leverage several test management tools, such as Xray, Zephyr Scale, QMetry, and TestRail.

With these integrations, you can design, test, prioritize, categorize, and group test cases into test plans, making it easy to track your testing process. As a result, it fosters cohesion between teams. For instance, developers and QA teams can collaborate within the same environment.

Test plans ‌link user stories, requirements, and defects, enabling full traceability during the software development life cycle

What is a Jira test plan?

A Jira test plan is an organized document you create with the help of a test management plugin such as Xray, Zephyr Scale, or QMetry. It includes an assortment of test cases within a specific scope, like a sprint, release, feature, or environment.

Within a test plan, you’ll identify the software testing scope, set objectives, present environments, and combine appropriate test cases. Test plans act as a source of truth where you and your team can keep tabs on the test status (pass or fail), assign tests, monitor progress, and ensure you’re covering functional and non-functional requirements.

Test plans ‌link user stories, requirements, and defects, enabling full traceability during the software development life cycle (SDLC). For instance, Xray for Jira includes a test plan issue type, allowing teams to house data on various test executions across different platforms or environments. It also enables stakeholders to measure and report release readiness.

Jira test plan example

Let’s say that you’re about to put a new feature, user registration, in your web application. The flow of the test plan you develop in Jira would include the general information, which would entail the name of the test plan (in this case, it would be a name like User Registration – Sprint 4), the name of the project involved, the version or sprint, and the test plan objective. Here, the registration process could be testing the reliability and security ‌across other browsers and platforms.

The test plan under discussion would cluster all the associated test cases, including those such as input validation, email confirmation, duplicate account checks, and API response handling. You would assign an ID, type (manual or automated), priority, and present status (pass, fail, blocked, or not run) to every test case. The test plan would also include the test environment (e.g., staging URL, supported browsers, database version) and allocate individual tests to team members.

Relevant user stories or epics in Jira would have a plan associated with them, allowing them to trace the development back to the tests being performed. Additionally, you would enter any detected defects as Jira issues and trace them back to the failing test cases, allowing developers to more clearly see the path that led to the defect.

How to create a test plan in Jira

The process of creating a test plan in Jira is a systematic process that requires leveraging a test management plugin, such as Xray, Zephyr Scale, or QMetry. These add-ons provide enhancements to the Jira platform, enabling you to describe test plans, organize test cases, plan test executions, and track test progress within the Jira interface.

First, you need to install your preferred test management plugin. After installation, the following are some general steps that can facilitate the compilation of a test plan:

1. Locate the test plan in the top menu or the project sidebar. Select the option for creating a new test plan.
2. Provide a descriptive name, choose the project related to the test plan, determine the target release or sprint, and summarize the purpose of the test plan in text.
3. Attach existing test cases or add new test cases directly to the test plan. Arrange them by feature, priority, or type.
4. Enable the allocation of test cases to a particular tester or environment. You can even determine various test executions on different platforms or configurations.
5. Refer to specific testing stories or epics linked to the test plan to determine the next steps for contact.
6. Track test progress operations by using dashboards, reports, and built-in metrics. Revisit the plan with additions of new tests or alterations in scope.

Jira test plan template

A Jira template is an organized template that you use to outline and coordinate tests in Jira through test management connectors such as Xray. The template serves as an outline to organize quality assurance work for product development iterations, ensuring that teams have all the information on the approach to testing.

A properly structured Jira test plan template consists of general fields, including test plan name, project, sprint or release, author, and creation date. From there, the objective and scope follow logically, explaining what features or requirements the testing will cover and what these tests will specifically exclude. The template should also include a list of test cases, typically with columns labeled Test Case ID, Title, Priority, Test Type (Manual or Automated), and Current Status.

A test plan template also includes fields where you can add test environment information (such as platform, browser, and database), as well as test execution and requirements for artifacts that are linked to support traceability to user stories or epics.

Best practices for Jira test plan management

• Set clear test objectives. Every test plan must begin with a good purpose. Write what you are testing and what its success will be. Well-defined goals help the team stay unified and focused.
• Establish connections between test cases/test plans and Jira user stories, epics, or requirements. This offers end-to-end traceability, providing ‌comprehensive test coverage and enabling impact analysis as requirements change.
• Prevent duplication by reusing existing test cases in different test plans or releases. Plugins such as Xray allow you to have organized tests that you can reuse to save repetitive work, as well as provide consistency.
• Connect Jira to CI/CD applications (such as Jenkins or GitHub Actions) to automate test processes and pass test results to test plans. This keeps your data current and minimizes manual work.
• Assign each task and execution to specific owners to ensure accountability.
• Use dashboards and reports in Jira (such as execution status, coverage, or defect density) that are specific to a plugin to track test progress.
• Test plans are living documents. Revise them whenever features change or when new necessities arise. Frequent reviews aid in adherence to relevance and accuracy.
• Record defects found during execution immediately and associate them with test cases that have failed on the plan, thus accelerating bug resolution.

A properly organized Jira test plan ensures you do not overlook issues or leave any detail of your product untested

Conclusion

Test plan management in Jira is not only about organizing test cases but also about ensuring traceability, accountability, and consistency throughout your software development life cycle. Although Jira does not have native test planning, you can use add-ons like Xray or Zephyr Scale to implement it. A properly organized Jira test plan ensures you do not overlook issues or leave any detail of your product untested. With it, you can scale QA to ensure that you have reliable and high-quality software.

This post was written by Mercy Kibet. Mercy is a full-stack developer with a knack for learning and writing about new and intriguing tech stacks.