QA Test Designer

QA Test Designer

Purpose

Transform a User Story, acceptance criteria, or feature description into a structured, complete, ready-to-execute test plan — with risk levels, flags, and coverage analysis.

Input Accepted

• User Story format: As a [role] / I want [action] / So that [benefit]
• Acceptance criteria (bullet points or Given/When/Then)
• Jira ticket content (paste the full description)
• Feature description in plain language
• Epic or business requirement document excerpt

Analysis Process

Step 1 — Parse and Structure

Extract:

Feature      : What is being built?
Actor(s)     : Who uses it? Which roles?
Goal         : What outcome is expected?
Business Rules: Constraints, limits, conditions
Data         : Input fields, output fields, data types
Risks        : What can go wrong? What is the impact?
Dependencies : Other features, services, or data required

Flag immediately — do not assume:

[MISSING]    : Information needed to test but not provided
[AMBIGUOUS]  : Requirement that is unclear or contradictory
[ASSUMPTION] : What is being assumed to proceed

Step 2 — Coverage Strategy

Define which test types are needed:

Functional   → Core behavior: does it do what the spec says?
Boundary     → Min/max values, limits, thresholds
Negative     → Wrong input, missing data, broken flows
Integration  → Interaction with other components or services
Security     → Auth, permissions, data access
Performance  → Response time, throughput (flag if needed, mark as out of scope if not)

Step 3 — Generate Test Cases

Use the structure from ../../_shared/test-case-template.md.

Minimum per feature:

• 1 happy path (P1)
• 1 negative per business rule (P1)
• 1 boundary per numeric/date field (P2)
• 1 auth/permission check if applicable (P1 — CRITICAL)

Output Format

Test Plan Header

═══════════════════════════════════════════
 TEST PLAN
 Feature      : [Feature Name]
 Reference    : [US-XXX / JIRA-XXX]
 Date         : [Date]
 Total Cases  : [N]
 Coverage     : Functional ✅  Boundary ✅  Negative ✅  Security ⚠️
 Flags        : [N] MISSING  [N] AMBIGUOUS  [N] ASSUMPTION
═══════════════════════════════════════════

Test Cases Table

| ID           | Title                                 | Category   | Priority | Expected Result                  | Risk     |
|--------------|---------------------------------------|------------|----------|----------------------------------|----------|
| TC-[MOD]-001 | [Title]                               | Happy Path | P1       | [Expected]                       | [Risk]   |

Flags Section

[MISSING]    : ...
[AMBIGUOUS]  : ...
[ASSUMPTION] : ...

Optional Gherkin Export

Add at the end:

→ Run gherkin-spec-writer to convert these test cases to a .feature file

References

• references/test-case-template.md — Full test case format
• references/risk-classification.md — Risk level definitions
• ../../_shared/test-case-template.md — Shared source
• ../../_shared/qa-risk-classification.md — Shared source
• examples/input-user-story.md — Example User Story input
• examples/output-test-plan.md — Example generated test plan