Defining an Escalation Plan

Before you begin testing, define an escalation plan for the project team to use when problems arise. The escalation plan should address these issues:

• Where do team members post test failures and other issues? Do they enter both in the incident tracking system or do they enter issues elsewhere, such as at a Web site?
• What steps do they follow before posting the issue or problem? For example, does the problem need to be reproduced? By whom?
• What information do they include when posting the issue? Examples are:
  • Contact information (phone number, pager number, and e-mail address for subteam lead and external support)
  • Status of the problem (new or ongoing)
  • Priority and business justification of the problem
  • Sequence of events leading to the problem (include relevant information such as IP addresses and domain name)
  • Causes (known or suspected)
  • Troubleshooting information (traces, diagnostics)
• How do they notify the design group of the issue or problem?
• Who reviews and resolves issues?
• What is the notification hierarchy?

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