Use Notepad, not Word when you start writing your plans

Following up on the last post on starting with a blank sheet of paper, Rick Grey pointed out that when he first starts writing up his notes, he prefers to work in a plain text editor - not a word processor. He does this so his focus remains on content, not on formatting. If he doesn't have tables, bullets, and headings available to him then he can't spend hours trying to format them to get them just right.

This tip was part of a brainstorm developed at the September 2011 Indianapolis Workshop on Software Testing on the topic of "Documenting for Testing." The attendees of that workshop (and participants in the brainstorm) included: Charlie Audritsh, Scott Barber, Rick Grey, Michael Kelly, Natalie Mego, Charles Penn, Margie Weaver, and Tina Zaza.