Parts of a Task for the Test Plan

For the test plan, you need only touch on four main components of each task:
A brief Description of the Task
Include only enough detail at this time to communicate the task to the project team. A one-line description is usually enough.
The Materials and Machine States Required to Perform the Task

Context is everything in usability testing. As the test moderator, you may actually be providing these materials or simulating the machine states if the product is in an early stage. For example, if you were testing a web site

before the screens are coded or prototyped, you might provide printed wireframe drawings of the pages. Or if the page were available in a file on the computer but not hooked up as part of a working prototype yet, you (or the participant) might open that file on the screen for viewing at the appropriate time.

Or. perhaps parts of the test will be performed with documentation, while other sections will not. For example, if you are testing how well instructions work for installing a wireless network, and the later tasks will be done without documentation, such as specifying drive designations on the new network, you need to specify this. If it is appropriate and helpful, your task list might also include components of the product that are being exercised for that particular task. If, for example, a task asks a participant to enter a customer name into an online form, you might specify the screens or web pages that the participant will navigate during task completion. This helps to give you a sense of whether the full system is being exercised or not.