In the waterfall methodology, testing occurs in the final phase of the project after development is completed. Test specification, planning and execution can be done together in one single moment. 

When bugs are detected, the development teams must work to fix them, and then testers test once again, starting another testing cycle.



Review requirements and create tests

When the development is done, testers must review requirements in order to create test cases. Each requirement should be covered by a specific test.

To know how to create tests with Xray check the Writing Tests module, from the Tester course.

Tests, Pre-Conditions and Test Sets are typically reusable entities; thus, they probably should not belong to the scope of a release.

Create the Test Plan


After creating Tests, you should create the Test Plan.

Create a Test Plan assigned to the version currently being developed and that is going to be the next release.

Even if you have multiple testing cycles, one Test Plan is enough. 

You can also create different Test Plans to aggregate different tests types (like security, performance, functional) and track progress in different perspective.

To know more on how to create Test Plans with Xray check the Planning Tests module from the Tester course.

Schedule Test Executions

You can schedule multiple Test Executions, from the Test Plan or create a Test Execution and add the Tests that you are going to perform.

In the Waterfall, there is no great advantage of creating execution directly from requirements (using Sub Test Executions), because you are performing tests for all requirements in the same moment. 

What can be extremely useful is the ability to create executions only for tests that have failed, as you are probably going to have several testing cycles. 



To know more on how to create Test Executions with Xray check the Executing Tests from the Tester course.


Track progress

You will need to track progress of all your Tests and decide if you are ready to release. You can do this by using reports like: 

  • Overall Coverage Report, to evaluate the current coverage status of the coverable entities (e.g. requirements)
  • Traceability Report, to quickly filter out relevant entities based on their coverage, check the runs of related Tests and reported defects
  • Test Executions Report and/or Test Plans Report, to see the results obtained on different environments, different revisions of the SUT, and to check if the reported defects need to still be resolved or not. 


Learn more about Tracking Progress & Reporting in the Advanced Reporting module, coming next in this course.