Why Is Digital Assurance Important To Address The Next Gen Testing Needs?

Author: Diya Jones
The digital transformation initiatives have placed the customer at their core. This customer centricity has led to strategies to find out what drives a customer to select and use specific products. As customers become aware of new age technologies, they demand products that incorporate aspects of such technologies but at reasonable prices. These technologies can have interfaces to the social media, mobility, analytics, cloud, Internet of Things, big data, AI and machine learning, and virtual reality among others.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the news of a trendy product spreads fast. In their quest to get hold of such a product, customers do not think twice about abandoning the legacy products. Such shifting preferences (read loyalties) of customers have put enormous strain on businesses as they struggle to keep pace with trending technologies and a dynamic demand curve.

This is where digital assurance incorporating predictive analysis comes to the help of enterprises. The predictive analysis uses databases reflecting past and present customer behaviour patterns. It does so to derive future trends and other business critical information by leveraging statistical algorithm and machine learning. Such an analysis helps enterprises to predict failures and take pro business decisions. The new age analytics helps businesses to foretell the market need and deliver quality products ahead of others.

Digital assurance is all about ensuring the quality of a product right from its design stage and extended to its entire usage lifecycle. It is primarily aimed at providing a seamless customer experience. To explain it further, if a company builds a powerful mobile phone, digital assurance ensures its quality right across the usage lifestyle. This means digital QA checks the product during the development phase and beyond to validate the latter’s performance, navigability, security, and usability. In doing so, it uses test automation as the technique to usher in a faster time to market besides covering a larger test area.

Before understanding how digital quality assurance can define the next generation testing needs, it is better to understand the latter. The next gen testing needs go beyond the traditional functional and regression testing. It rides the Agile and DevOps paradigms to infuse quality right into the design and development stages of the SDLC and beyond. Digital quality assurance studies the market, takes customer feedback and develops products that are high on user experience.

If the next gen testing needs are about speed, quality, compatibility, security, and scalability, digital assurance solutions can address them squarely. Let us find out how.

Speed: By employing Agile and DevOps methodologies, digital QA identifies and eliminates glitches early in the SDLC. This prevents costly and time consuming rework leading to the speedier delivery of products. Speed can offer the early mover advantage in a competitive market. It can be the differentiator between a market leader and an also ran one.

Quality: An enhanced customer experience can only be obtained if the product functions seamlessly across devices, platforms, networks, browsers, and operating systems. It is the chief enabler for business transformation and ensures customers stick to the product. A quality product always stands tall amidst competition. The leading brands in any domain are a testimony to this axiom.

Compatibility: Digital testing ensures the seamless functioning of a product across a complex application landscape. It provides a high customer experience as the product functions on different platforms and devices without any hitch. The test automation framework used in digital testing is the chief enabler for compatibility. This is because a test automation framework provides the right tools, APIs, and language compatibility to write robust reusable scripts.

Security: In the IoT defined landscape, the lack of security of an application can play havoc. Not only can it lead to the breach of sensitive customer and business information, but also lead to disastrous consequences for all stakeholders. The need for 100% trustworthy applications with multiple connectivities can be met by leveraging digital assurance solutions. Needless to say, when customers are assured of the security of an application, the trust level grows manifold.

Scalable: A product should provide more or less similar customer experience in real time irrespective of the user load. The product, be it backed by cloud or legacy systems, should meet user traffic at all times.

Conclusion

The Agile and DevOps led quality assurance goes beyond the traditional regressive testing. It has the right wherewithal to address the next gen testing needs predicated on cutting edge technologies, business models, and customer demand.