Quality Assurance for Digital Enterprises

Every business environment is being significantly influenced by an unprecedented wave of innovation, an all pervasive networking, the capacity of big data, the power of advanced analytics and the future potential of the mobile technology. Digital does not affect a few selective parts of a business, rather it ripples through almost everything about the business. Harnessing this digital force requires a holistic view of the enterprise in terms of both technology and culture.

With differences blurring between physical and virtual environment, an effective business strategy is required to leverage technology and create new business models and end user experience. This blistering pace of change in the business and its technology runs significant risks and which need to be effectively managed. Test automation significantly accelerates the process of business digitization and its transformation into a digital enterprise.

First and foremost it is to be known and understood that we cannot escape testing. In the good old days, testing was squeezed to the end which did not have any positive impact on the project deliverables. Hence testing is engaged early on and over and over again. Testing a modern application is difficult than test old monolithic applications as architecturally they are more complex and it is going to be more so as time progresses.

The schedule and cost are tremendous. One solution to this is to get smarter in case of testing. Automated testing is imperative and continuous. There is never enough resource or the time to perform testing, hence tests need to be prioritized. With so many different technologies, interdependencies, integrations and the environment of operation, a solution for automation can quickly become very complex.

In today’s world, there are three main problems test automation solutions try to solve.

• Easy adoption of test automation solution
• Address the complexities that make it hard to test modern digital systems.
• Extract the maximum ROI out of the test automation solution.

Digital Enterprise test Platform

An enterprise test platform supports automated testing as opposed to test automation. It helps to create automated tests using a variety of chosen tools. It helps to create a log of the tests created by all the systems under test. New tests can be created as well as reused. New tests sets which can be a combination of manual or automated tests can be defined or created. They can be run right away or advanced scheduling capabilities can be used to run at a later date. Furthermore, conditions can be defined to run those tests so they can be tied to continuous integration process practiced in the organization. Additionally, it comes with an API interface which enables testing the other tool set in the system.

Conclusion

With an all time high competition, digital enterprises work towards faster time to market and enhanced user experience. This results into higher conversion rates and a positive Net Promoter Score. These benefits can be derived through QA approaches like Continuouns Testing. The ideal way forward is however trying to automate the testing not the tests.

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is the world's first Independent Software Testing Company to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.