What is Test Strategy? Guide To Develop Test Strategy (With Sample)

You’ve built a stunning bridge, an architectural marvel. But before cars can cross it, you need to make sure it can withstand the weight of traffic, handle weather changes, and hold up over time. That’s where testing comes in. And just like building that bridge, you need a strategy for testing your software. 

As QA managers, knowing how to craft a good test strategy is more than crucial. It’s not just about running tests, but also being strategic: knowing what to test, how to test, and most importantly, why you are testing them in the first place. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to build a robust test strategy.

What is a Test Strategy?

A test strategy is a high-level document that outlines the overall approach and guiding principles for software testing. It provides a structured framework that directs the testing team on how to efficiently and effectively conduct tests, ensuring that all key aspects of the software are validated.

Benefits of Test Strategy

1. Provides clear direction and focus for testing activities.
2. Identifies and mitigates critical risks early.
3. Streamlines processes, optimizing resource use and timelines.
4. Promotes adherence to industry and regulatory standards.
5. Enhances teamwork by aligning all members with project goals.
6. Aids in effective allocation of resources.
7. Facilitates efficient monitoring and reporting of test progress.
8. Ensures comprehensive validation of all critical functionalities.
    

Types of Test Strategy

We identify 3 major types of test strategies:

1. Static vs Dynamic Test Strategy

Here we encounter a dual approach to software testing. Static testing involves evaluating code or documents without execution (catching issues early), while dynamic testing requires actually running the software to validate its behavior in real scenarios.
 

Why balance them? With static testing, we want to catch defects early, whereas with dynamic testing, we want to verify the software’s real-world behavior.
 

Without static testing, bugs get so deeply entrenched in the codebase that it will take quite a lot of time, effort, and money to resolve. Without dynamic testing, even code that looks correct on paper might fail in practice due to overlooked execution paths or integration problems.
 

2. Preventive vs. Reactive Test Strategy

As the name suggests, we want to strike a balance between anticipating potential defects vs responding to issues after they have occurred. 
 

Why balance them? Preventive measures are great, but they usually focus on known risks and expected issues. The cost of fixing defects is lower since they are caught before being embedded deep in the system.
 

However, no team can predict all problems upfront. It’s nice to leave some room open for the notorious Unknown Unknown. Those edge cases surface only when the system is operational or undergoing integration with other components. That’s exactly where a reactive test strategy shines. 
 

3. Hybrid Test Strategy

Here we want to strike a balance between manual testing and automation testing.
 

Why balance them? Manual testing is awesome as a starting point. A common best practice is conducting exploratory testing sessions to find bugs. After that, through automation feasibility assessment, the team decides if that specific test scenario is worth automating or not. If the answer is yes, the team can leverage automation test scripts/testing tools to automate it for future executions.

Learn More: How To Do Automation Testing?
 

What To Include in a Test Strategy Document

1. Test level

Start your test strategy with the concept of a test pyramid, which consists of 3 levels:

1. Unit tests (base of the pyramid): they focus on testing individual components or functions of the software in isolation. These tests ensure that the smallest parts of the system, such as functions, methods, or classes, are working correctly. Since unit tests operate at a granular level, they are highly focused and tend to have the greatest coverage in a test suite. Developers typically write unit tests alongside or soon after writing code. They are cheap, easy to automate, and provide rapid feedback.
2. Integration tests (middle layer of the pyramid): now that all of the components are working fine individually, we need to test if they are working well together. These tests ensure that data flow between parts of the system works as intended, and the interfaces between modules are robust. Integration tests strike a balance between speed and coverage but may require more setup.
3. E2E tests/system tests (upper layer of the pyramid): End-to-end tests focus on the entire system, validating that the entire application works as a cohesive whole, from the user interface to the back-end systems. These tests provide high confidence that the system meets business requirements, but because they are complex and slow, only a few should be written compared to unit and integration tests. E2E tests are often prone to flakiness and should be reserved for critical workflows.

How do you incorporate all of this into your test strategy? The pyramid can be understood as the percentage to which a type of tests should be automated. E2E tests should account for no more than 5-10% of the overall test suite. For integration testing, the figure is approximately 15-20%, while for unit tests, it should reach up to 70-80%.

2. Objectives and scope

After that, you’ll need to identify the objectives. What exactly are we trying to achieve here? What does success look like? For example, in this test session, we want to validate functional aspects, while in another, we want to aim for the non-functional aspects (security, performance, usability). 

This objective usually comes from project requirements. You should review the project’s requirements, user stories, and business objectives to align the strategy with those desired outcomes of the software.

From those objectives, we develop a test scope. 

Scope in a test strategy outlines the boundaries of what will and will not be tested during the software development process. It defines the areas, features, or components that will be the focus of testing. You’ll need to list down:

1. Features to be tested
2. Features not to be tested
3. Testing types
4. Test environment

Why is this necessary? We want to prevent testing scope creep where the team tests unnecessary features. Considering which areas to test is highly strategic when it comes to meeting sprint requirements. 

We also want to prioritize critical areas. Ask yourself:

• What are the areas most likely to fail? 
• What are the most commonly accessed functions by users?
• Which user actions drive the most traffic or engagement in the application?
• Are there third-party services (APIs, payment gateways, external databases) that the system depends on? What is the impact if these fail or are unavailable?
• Which features have undergone recent changes or additions, making them more prone to defects?
   

3. Testing types

There are so many types of testing to choose from, each serving a different purpose. Testing types can be divided into the following groups:

• By Application Under Test (AUTs): Grouping tests according to the type of software being evaluated, such as web, mobile, or desktop applications.
• By Application Layer: Organizing tests based on layers in traditional three-tier software architecture, including the user interface (UI), backend, or APIs.
• By Attribute: Categorizing tests based on the specific features or attributes being evaluated, such as visual, functional, or performance testing.
• By Approach: Classifying tests by the overall testing method, whether manual, automated, or driven by AI.
• By Granularity: Grouping tests by the scope and level of detail, like unit testing or end-to-end testing.
• By Testing Techniques: Organizing tests based on the methods used for designing and executing tests. This is more specific than general approaches and includes techniques like black-box, white-box, and gray-box testing.

Learn More: 15 Types of QA Testing You Should Know
 

4. Test approach

Agile is the go-to approach for most QA teams today. Instead of treating testing as a separate phase, it is integrated throughout the development process. Testing occurs continuously at each step, enabling testers to work closely with developers to ensure fast, frequent, and high-quality delivery.

Agile allows for shift-left testing where you essentially “push” testing to earlier stages of development and weave development with testing. 

Read More: What is Shift Left Testing? How To Shift Left Your Test Strategy?
 

5. Test Criteria

The criteria act as checkpoints to ensure the product is both stable and testable before major testing efforts, and that it is ready to move forward after testing is complete. There are 2 types: Entry Criteria and Exit Criteria. 
 

Entry criteria are the conditions that must be fulfilled before system testing can begin, such as:

• Code Completion: All features and functions have been developed and implemented, and the code is "frozen" (no new changes except for bug fixes).
• Unit and Integration Tests Passed: All unit and integration tests must have been executed successfully without any critical issues.
• Basic Functionality Verified: Key functionality, such as user login, navigation, or database connections, should work without major defects.
• Environment Setup: The test environment (hardware, software, network configurations) is set up and ready for testing.
• Bug Reports Logged: All known defects from earlier testing phases have been documented in a bug-tracking system.
• Test Data Prepared: Required test data, mock systems, and test cases are ready and available for execution.

Exit criteria are the conditions that must be met before system testing is considered complete, and the product can proceed to the next stage, such as:

• All Tests Executed: All system test cases, including functional, non-functional, and regression tests, have been executed.
• Critical Issues Resolved: All "showstopper" or critical defects have been fixed. The remaining major and minor defects fall below an agreed-upon threshold (e.g., no more than 5 major bugs and 10 minor bugs).
• Successful End-to-End Testing: Key business workflows or critical user journeys (e.g., user registration, checkout) have been successfully validated.
• Test Report Generation: Test reports, including defect logs, test execution status, and performance results, have been reviewed and discussed with stakeholders.
• Build Stability: The system can generate stable and deployable builds across all supported environments.
   

6. Hardware-software configuration

This is your test environment: where the actual testing takes place. They should mirror the production environment as closely as possible, and there should be additional tools/features to assist testers with their job. They have 2 major parts:

• Hardware: servers, computers, mobile devices, or specific hardware setups such as routers, network switches, and firewalls
• Software: operating systems, browsers, databases, APIs, testing tools, third-party services, and dependent software packages

For performance testing specifically, you’ll also need to set up the network components to simulate real-world networking conditions (network bandwidth, latency simulations, proxy settings, firewalls, VPN configurations, or network protocols).

Here’s an example for you:

7. Testing tools

If you go with manual testing, you would need a test management system to keep track of all of those manual test results. Most commonly we have Jira as an all-in-one project management tool to help with bug tracking.
 

After testing, they can document their bug in a Google Sheet document that looks like this.

Of course, as you scale, this approach proves to be inefficient. At a certain point, a dedicated test management system that seamlessly integrates with other test activities (including test creation, execution, reporting) is a better option.
 

This system should also support automation testing. Imagine a system where you can write your test scripts, store all of the test objects, test data, artifacts, where you can also run your tests in the environment of your choice, then generate detailed reports for your findings.
 

To achieve such a level of comprehensiveness, testers have 2 options:

1. Build a tailor-made test automation framework from scratch
2. Find a vendor-based solution

Each comes with their own advantages and disadvantages. The former is highly customizable, but requires a significant level of technical expertise to pull off, while the latter comes with out-of-the-box features that you can immediately enjoy, but there is some investment required.
 

The real question is: what is the ROI you can get if you go with one of those choices? Check out our article on how to calculate test automation ROI.
 

8. Test deliverables

This is what success looks like. Test deliverables come from test objectives you set out earlier.
 

Define what artifacts and documents should be produced during the testing process to communicate the progress and findings of testing activities. As test strategy is a high-level document, you don’t need to go into minute details of each deliverable, but rather only a brief outline of the items that the team wants to create.

9. Testing measurements and metrics

Establish the key performance indicators (KPI) and success metrics for the project. These metrics will not only be the means to measure the efficiency and quality of the testing process but also provide a common goal and language of communication among team members. 

Some common testing metrics include: 

• Test Coverage: Measures the percentage of the codebase that is tested by your suite of tests.
• Defect Density: Indicates the number of defects found in a specific module or unit of code, typically calculated as defects per thousand lines of code (KLOC). A lower defect density reflects better code quality, while a higher one suggests more vulnerabilities.
• Defect Leakage: Refers to defects that escape detection in one testing phase and are found in subsequent phases or after release. 
• Mean Time to Failure (MTTF): Represents the average time that a system or component operates before failing.

These metrics will later be visualized in a test report.

10. Risks

List out the potential risks and clear plans to mitigate them, or even contingency plans to adopt in case these risks do show up in reality. 

Testers generally conduct a level of risk analysis (= probability of it occurring x impact) to see which risk should be addressed in priority. 

For example, after planning, the team realizes that the timeline is extremely tight, but they are lacking the technical expertise to deliver the objectives. This is a High Probability High Impact scenario, and they must have a contingency plan: either changing the objectives, investing into the team’s expertise, or outsourcing entirely to meet the delivery date.

All of these items in the document should be carefully reviewed by the business team, the QA Lead, and the Development Team Lead. From this document, you will be able to develop detailed test plans for sub-projects, or for each iteration of the sprint.  
 

Read More: Types of Automation Testing: A Beginner’s Guide

Sample Test Strategy Document

Here’s a sample test strategy for your reference:

When creating a test strategy document, you can create a table with all of the items listed above, and have a brainstorming session with the important stakeholders (project manager, business analyst, QA Lead, and the Development Team Lead) to fill in the necessary information for each item. You can use the table below as a starting point:
 

Test Plan vs. Test Strategy

The test strategy document gives a higher level perspective than the test plan, and contents in the test plan must be aligned with the direction of the test strategy.   
 

Test strategy provides general methods for product quality, tailored to different software types, organizational needs. quality policy compliance, and the overall testing approach. The test plan, on the other hand, is created for specific projects, and considers goals, stakeholders, and risks. In Agile development, a master plan for the project can be made, with specific sub-plans for each iteration.  
 

The table below provides a detailed comparison between the two:  
 

How Katalon Fits in With Any Test Strategy

Katalon is a comprehensive solution that supports test planning, creation, management, execution, maintenance, and reporting for web, API, desktop, and even mobile applications across a wide variety of environments, all in one place, with minimal engineering and programming skill requirements. You can utilize Katalon to support any test strategy without having to adopt and manage extra tools across teams.

Katalon allows QA teams to quickly move from manual testing to automation testing thanks to the built-in keywords feature. These keywords are essentially ready-to-use code snippets that you can quickly drag-and-drop to construct a full test script without having to write any code. There is also the record-and-playback feature that records the sequence of action you take on your screen then turns it into an automated test script that you can re-execute across a wide range of environments.

After that, all of the test objects, test cases, test suites, and test artifacts created are managed in a centralized Object Repository, enabling better test management. You can even map automated tests to existing manual tests thanks to Jira and Xray integration.
 

For test execution, Katalon makes it easy to run tests in parallel across browsers, devices, and OS, while everything related to setup and maintenance is already preconfigured. AI-powered features such as Smart Wait, self-healing, scheduling, and parallel execution enable effortless test maintenance.
 

Finally, for test reporting, Katalon generates detailed analytics on coverage, release, flakiness, and pass/fail trend reports to make faster, more confident decisions.

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