Overview

The key to properly validating your product is having a clear and detailed plan of action. This plan provides you with a roadmap to follow-during the entire process, and adhering to this plan saves considerable-effort throughout the process. A plan provides you with deadlines and milestones, as well as acting as reassurance to your customers that the product will arrive on time. The validation plan also provides an effective communication method to inform development and management of the intent of your effort. The plan is a document owned by the entire company, but your validation team ensures the execution of the plan. As mentioned earlier, planning should begin as soon as possible in order to increase the return on investment (ROI). If a well thought out plan is in place, the actual testing goes much more smoothly.

During the initial phases of the development cycle, the development team is busy interpreting the requirements given to them by their customer or marketing department and writing specifications for those requirements. While this is going on, the validation team should also be busy creating test plans. It is important for validation to be involved in the early stages of the development cycle in order to ensure the testability of the product later on, and this early involvement allows the validation team to be proactive with their planning.

Before any test development can begin, a test plan needs to be in place. This plan will provide the validation team with guidance and a...