Testing often consumes 25% to 35% of the entire software development and maintenance budget, but on average only catches 80% of the bugs. In addition, testers are often unhappy with the intense work pressures and what they perceive as a "can't win" atmosphere. Effective testing is vital to organizations, and writing effective test plans is an essential survival skill for testing & QA professionals. The primary objective of this workshop is to learn how to develop a test plan, and how to actually get organized and ready for a test project. This will be done through hands-on practice where participants will actually work through a case study in a series of small-team exercises, in order to draft a test plan for a very realistic project.