In the "Demo1" project you begin the Test Design process by defining a set of test objectives (i.e. what are these tests intended to demonstrate) and selecting Application Model entries to include in the "Features to be tested" section. You could select the same folders as you selected in Section 3 of your Test Plan, but you will usually find that you want to create a number of different test designs to fully test the various components of that section of the test application. As a result, you will usually select a smaller section of the application, and will commonly have multiple test designs for each item in section 3 of your test plan.

During the Test Design process, you may decide to use Test Lead queries that list for you all risks associated with a particular section of the test application. Using the Risk Register in this way helps you to decide what type of tests are required, and to make sure that tests have been designed to cover all critical risk areas.

Test Design is an extremely critical step in the overall testing process. If important tests are missed in the design process, then serious errors can remain undetected in the supposedly "tested" product. Test Lead helps avoid this problem by providing support for a number of formal test techniques including Functional Analysis, Transaction Flows, Equivalence Partitioning, Boundary Value Analysis and State Transition Testing. You can create OLE links to external documents or diagrams to help further define what needs to be done. Test Lead also provides a special "Checklist" processing function and a number of pre-defined "Checklists" which you can use as reminders to make sure that you planned for any eventuality, and have prepared tests to cover all major application functions. You can edit the supplied checklists if you want, or add additional checklists of your own.

Although highly technical, Test Design is usually best done without being too concerned about the actual test data that will be required. Definition of the test data and related issues is done at the Test Case level.