This phase involves defining test scope, test environment setup, network connectivity, deciding different test
phases, approaches & methodologies, planning for manual vs. automated testing, effort & person hrs
estimation, defect tracking mechanism, configuration management & risk management (both from testing
perspective) and evaluation & identification of testing & defect tracking tools.
Note that all these cannot be done on day one of the project itself. Strategic decisions involving investments like setting up test environments which may involve setting up separate test beds / servers, hardware & software, say purchase of desktops, testing tools, etc. will have to be decided in the early stages.
Requirements for testing are identified based on the software requirements specification, functional spec,
design spec and use case documents as appropriate
