See in real time u will be facing so many problems . first 
of all you need to understand the architecture of the 
application and then make sure that the environment which u 
r working is similar to production environment then get the 
specifications of that and then get the strategy document 
then make a team and allot them some work.plan ur test by 
keeping the deadline in mind. For everything make sure u 
have a notes from the client.upto this layer u will come to 
know when u do a project. then start ur scripting this part 
u can try with any application(Yahoo). and the same case 
with the execution as well.analysis is a typical part where 
client will bounce on u with variety of questions. so we 
got be confident enough in answering him.

Untill and unless U face the real time problem U won't 
understand!!!

When you are involving in to the project. First of all you 
need to know the Basic architecture of the application and 
need to know about the Servers.

And you need to know the protocol level like which protocol 
is intercting.

Performance testplan, baseline documents,Effort estimation 
plans,Bench marking.