or outsourced testers to be helpful, they need to be testing the right things. But too much instruction can backfire.
Traditional test case management, complete with preconditions, a zillion steps to follow, and expected outcomes to check for, is overwhelming enough. Pair that with a legacy test case management platform, and outsourced testers’ eyes immediately glaze over.

As testing contractor Thechanman707 puts it:

“In my 7 years of manual testing, test steps have been the biggest waste of time and resources.”

Why? Well, in theory, you’re paying a pretty penny for your outsourced testers because you trust their expertise. That means they don’t need you to hold their hand. And they don’t need a complicated tool slowing them down.

Checklist-style test plans give outsourced testers enough guidance to know what they should be testing but not so much that they feel stifled — and miss the unknown unknowns.

What’s a checklist-style test plan?

Before we get into the “checklist-style” portion of this definition, let’s first review what a test plan is. A test plan — not to be confused with a complex plan for your testing strategy — is simply a list of things that need to be tested. Each bullet on that list is a prompt, an idea of what to check.

Sample prompts in your test plan could be:

• Login functionality
• Multi-factor authentication
• Profile management
• Keyboard navigation
• Touch gestures (swipe, tap, pinch-to-zoom)

Each prompt clues outsourced testers into an area of the product they should explore. But it doesn’t tell testers how to test each of those prompts. That part is up to them. Redditor irsupeficial emphasizes:

“Going through individual test cases, describing every step [to take], unless in a very, VERY specific context - is a waste. Maintenance headache and the value derived (if any at all) rarely (but not always) justifies the investment.”

The “checklist-style” part of the definition refers to how you track the prompts in your plan. It looks a lot like — yep, you guessed it — a checklist. Each prompt gets its own row, and then the tester marks whether that test passed or failed:

If your outsourced testing team is doing a lot of tests, your checklist may look more like this, where there’s a higher-level testing prompt with more detailed tests and their results below it.

With a checklist-style test plan, it only takes a quick glance to see what functionality is working and what isn’t — and that helps you make key decisions.

For instance, maybe you notice that there’s a particularly buggy feature. To make sure you cover all your bases, you could request that outsourced testers spend more time there. Or you could start assigning bugs to your development team as soon as they’re identified, getting fixes into production faster.

Why checklist-style test plans work well for outsourced testing

As we alluded to up top, managing outsourced testing is all about balance. If there’s too much structure, it’s easy for outsourced testers to go through the motions and overlook the hard-to-find bugs. If there’s too little structure, you risk gaps in coverage — gaps that could outweigh the benefits of contracting an outsourced team.

Checklist-style test plans are the ideal solution because:

They are easy to understand.

Unlike other testing tools that have a steep learning curve, checklists are something everyone is familiar with. Testers don’t need extensive training on a platform they’ve never used before. They can just get to work. And a faster ramp-up means your outsourced testers get more done in less time.

Plus, checklists are far quicker for you to whip up than exhaustive test cases. As Redditor GlitteringProject922 points out:

“I can probably cover testing a registration form using one checklist of 20 requirements, while I’d need a good 7 cases of 10 steps each where 50% of the steps are identical and frankly obvious. This makes for a huge inflation of the documentation, that, to me, becomes unwieldy really fast. Writing test cases themselves is also much more time-consuming and much, much more prone to the pesticide paradox.”

They allow for the unexpected.

In theory, formal test cases, step-by-step test scripts, and a tedious bug-reporting process “guarantee” that all the parts of your product you want to be tested get tested. But that’s not necessarily true.

If you’re too close to your own product, you may not be able to think of all the possible ways you could test something — and that’s a skill that great outsourced testers have. Checklist-style test plans point testers in the right direction and allow for impromptu tests.

A Redditor in r/QualityAssurance explains the value of this autonomy well:

“A test case will usually be one path along a decision tree, while a checklist can be the decision tree itself. Each check is basically equivalent to a complete test case. Test cases seem like huge time sinks compared to checklists and offer no added value.”

Ultimately, letting testers make their own decision trees ends up giving you even more coverage than you’d get if you planned everything to a T.

They are low maintenance.

One of the biggest challenges in QA is keeping test cases relevant as products evolve. Heavy test documentation often becomes outdated quickly, requiring constant updates that drain time and resources.

Checklist test plans, on the other hand, are designed for flexibility.

If your outsourced testers come up with new test ideas during testing, they can jot them down and slot them right into the plan. If features change, you can tweak checklist items or delete them altogether — no need to rewrite long, complex scripts.

They’re also easy to distribute and scale. They work for outsourced testing teams of 2 or 2,000. And they work well with easy-to-use tools like spreadsheets or a more purpose-built tool like Testpad.

They are reusable.

Since core functionalities remain largely unchanged between releases, your outsourced testers can reuse checklists to validate that previous features still work as expected. They might even be able to use some checklists to test similar parts of other products, reducing redundant work and ensuring consistency across test cycles.

They are transparent.

With a checklist-style test plan, it’s easy for everyone to get and stay on the same page.

• You can monitor testing progress at any point in time, adding more prompts in certain areas that need more coverage or directing testers away from other features that don’t need as much prodding.
• Testers can easily see what’s been tested, what’s still at risk, and where gaps exist in their coverage.
• Engineering teams don’t have time to dig through lengthy reports to figure out what bugs are happening where. An easy-to-read pass/fail grid shows them exactly where to focus their energy.
• Stakeholders can take a peek at how testing is going, perhaps even eliminating the need to send them daily or weekly updates.

An added benefit: They show you who your best outsourced testers are.

The best testers don’t find testing monotonous — they find it an exciting challenge.

“Figuring out why, how, and what to test is where you truly become valuable as a tester. Being able to identify the scenarios that will uncover something new and increase your confidence in the quality of the product and design a set of tests that will identify critical risks as quickly and efficiently as possible is where the real skill comes in.”

- Redditor perdovim in r/software testing

The testers who consistently add smart tests based on your prompts are the ones you want to keep and continue engaging with over time.

A smarter way to manage outsourced testing

While you can run checklist-style testing in something as simple as a spreadsheet, it can be tough to consolidate all of your outsourced testers’ results into one easily viewable and reportable document without at least some manual manipulation.

Purpose-built tools like Testpad rid you of that busy work, allowing multiple outsourced testers to log their tests and corresponding results into one central repository. With everything in one place, you can easily see what’s working and what’s not — and you can share that information with clients and stakeholders instantly with guest-access links.

Testpad was also built with testers in mind, with keyboard shortcuts and a native outline structure to support comprehensive coverage.

So, why not try it out? Sign up for a 30-day free trial today to see whether it’s right for your outsourced (or even in-house) testing team.

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