If all this sounds like a lot of work, don’t worry – it’s not. Most of this is very straightforward, and you’ll be able to fill in most of the answers in a single sitting (or a single kick-off meeting, if you're working with a team).

Whether your tree-testing plan is simple or more complex, we do recommend that you:

• Collaborate with your team on it, so everyone’s in the loop (and can be involved as they want to be)
  
  
• Write it down and share it, so that everyone can keep updated as the project moves along (and sometimes changes as it goes). We typically use a project spreadsheet that we fill in as we go, shared in real-time using Google Drive, but the exact tools used matter less than the fact that it’s documented and “lived in” by your team.
  
  
• Reuse it next time, adding or deleted steps as you go, until you get a process that is tailored to your situation.
  
  
  

Here’s a typical high-level plan for 3 rounds of tree testing (testing the existing tree, testing your new trees, then testing your even-better-with-revisions “final” tree).

If you’re just planning 1 or 2 rounds of testing, it should be easy to take this and cut it down to what you need.

• like in “Observing the UX”.
• show TT project schedule (see Google Drive). Just the high level here, then break it down in subsequent chapters.
• include “planning questions” template?

Next: Chapter 4 - key points