An Acceptance Test Plan is usually developed as part of the software development specifications.

A test plan documents the strategy that will be used to verify and ensure that a product or system meets its design specifications and other requirements. A test plan is usually prepared by or with significant input from Test Engineers.

Depending on the product and the responsibility of the organization to which the test plan applies, a test plan may include one or more of the following:

1. Design Verification or Compliance test - to be performed during the development or approval stages of the product, typically on a small sample of units.
2. Manufacturing / Production test - to be performed during preparation or assembly of the product in an ongoing manner for purposes of performance verification and quality control.
3. Acceptance / Commissioning test - to be performed at the time of delivery or installation of the product.
4. Service & Repair test - to be performed as required over the service life of the product.
5. Regression test - to be performed on an existing operational product, to verify that existing functionality didn't get broken when other aspects of the environment are changed (e.g., upgrading the platform on which an existing application runs).

A critical component of the Test Plan is the Test Cases, which are a well defined sequence of steps that must be executed to test the correct behavior (functionalities) and features of an application. An expected result or expected outcome is usually given.

When automated testing tools are used, test cases are converted into Test Scripts as required by the automated testing tool being used.

Our model driven software analysis approach enables us to automatically generate both Test Cases and Test Scripts from a source code-base using fully automated techniques. The following schematic illustrates our approach: