Test plans may change as the risk the product is perceived
to pose changes. Test plans say who does what, when, and what they produce. See section 8.5
for an
example; also see Chapter 6 and section 4.4 for an overview of the processes you??™ll need to plan for.
Story
ir Peter Hall was once an unknown, aspiring theatre director: a novice. He finally got his
Big Break directing a play, and bought a copy of the play, some paints, and cardboard, an
enormous blank bound book, and hastened off to a rented cottage for a month.
In the cottage he made a model of the theatre with all the actors, lights, scenery, etc. He cut up
the copy of the play into individual sheets and pasted them into the blank bound book, leaving a
blank page between each page of dialogue. Then, looking at the model theatre, he annotated the
dialogue scene-by-scene until he knew exactly where everyone should be, what their cues were,
roughly what the lighting should do, and what noises-off were needed.
The day came when he entered the theatre and placed his enormous book (which impressed
everyone) on a table in the middle of the auditorium.
???Act one, scene one, darlings,??? he called. The cast dutifully took their places, and he started to
direct them exactly as his notes showed.
After an hour he realized that something was wrong. Nothing gelled. The cast just weren??™t
behaving like the bits of cardboard. They were scruffy, misbehaved, and awkward.
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