7 factors deciding the outcome of your Digital Transformation Test strategy?

Digital transformation implies connecting each and every system and processes of an enterprise to achieve a slew of outcomes including quicker decision making. This has come about as a result of increased internet connectivity and a proliferation of digital technologies. Digital transformation has spawned many new age companies that are agile, lean, focused and result oriented. To compete with such newbies, enterprises saddled with legacy systems and used to the traditional ways of doing things need to transform themselves.

Although Digital transformation services aim at reorienting the systems, processes, and stakeholders in an organization, they are prone to risks as well. These risks can be manifold – from having vulnerabilities in systems, processes, networks, and products to dealing with untrained resources. Moreover, since digital transformation services aim at accelerating the time to market as far as the products and services are concerned, quality is often given a short shrift. This often leads to the failure of products in meeting customers’ expectations. When enterprise digital transformation initiatives do not yield the stated business objectives, the need for digital quality assurance becomes critical.

Why digital quality assurance?

• To identify and eliminate glitches present in the systems, processes, networks, products and services.

• To meet the rising customer expectations for better quality products/services.

• To stay in competition by delivering quality products/services with reduced lead times.

• To accelerate the time to market with better products by using Agile and DevOps methodologies.

• To adhere to quality and security regulations.

• To prevent hackers from exploiting the systems, products or services.

• To ensure brand loyalty among customers.

• To achieve business objectives and ROI.

A robust digital testing strategy requires incorporating the shift-left approach. This is mainly to pre-empt the creation of glitches by testing the product during the development phase itself. With Agile and DevOps paradigms becoming the benchmarks for a digital testing strategy, how can test automation stay behind? Digital QA through test automation helps businesses to future proof their systems, products or services. It does so by increasing the test coverage area and carrying out repetitive functional and non-functional testing seamlessly.

7 factors influencing a digital transformation test strategy

#1 Security: Security is arguably the biggest factor influencing the digital software testing of products. It involves aspects like vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, risk assessment, and security auditing among others. Here, testers identify the weaknesses in a system or product by using an automated software. Also, a simulated attack is carried out a la penetration testing to check for potential vulnerabilities, which when removed, can prevent the system or product from external or internal hacking.

• 2 Cost: This can have two different connotations. On the one side, the cost incurred by the business when a product fails to live up to the users’ expectations is taken into account. While on the other hand, the cost of implementing manual/test automation is considered. In the case of choosing a test automation software, the need for an open source or licensed software is decided based on the overall cost and the type of tests to be carried out.

#3 Presence of legacy systems: Digital QA involves the testing of a software product across devices, networks, platforms, frameworks, browsers, and operating systems. This requires faster systems with the latest test software. However, if an enterprise is beset with legacy systems then the test strategy needs to be looked at afresh. This is done by considering the capability of such systems and the cost of replacing the same.

1. Reliability: The software systems that enable digital transformation should be tested to know the extent to which certain functions of these can perform on a continuous basis. This includes feature testing, load testing and regression testing.
2. Scalability: The changing dynamics of business requires an enterprise to be flexible. The flexibility should be in terms of expanding the capacity of its systems and processes to meet any future demand. The test strategy chosen should check the scalability aspect of the systems.
3. Interoperability: An enterprise will have a number of software programs running its digital transformation initiative. These programs should have a better interface with each other to achieve the overall business objectives. Hence, the test strategy should check the programs’ interoperability.
4. Skillset: The success of a test strategy depends on the expertise of the test team. The test strategy should consider this aspect along with the need and cost of training.

Conclusion

The success of digital transformation initiatives by a business enterprise is critical for its sustenance. The systems enabling this transformation should be rigorously tested based on the factors mentioned above.