An effective digital testing strategy is paramount to validate the functioning of a product or service and lend credibility to it in the market. It leads to faster identification of glitches and delivers superior user experiences.
Digital transformation is aimed at streamlining processes, improving the quality of products, reducing waste and delivering superior user experiences, among others. However, not all digital transformation efforts bear fruit as shown by the increasing number of failures of many start-ups. A major part of the problem is the way digital testing is conducted as an integral part of digital transformation. The end result of such half baked digital assurance testing is the release of shoddy products. When glitches are left unattended due to lack of monitoring during the testing process, the overall customer experience takes a hit. Consequently, the business enterprise in the middle of it suffers from financial losses. Since digital assurance and testing play a critical role in driving profitability for any enterprise, the focus should be on developing an ideal digital testing strategy.
Steps to develop an effective digital testing strategy
Merely blaming the result (poor quality product) will not do any good unless and until the process is set right with a robust strategy in place.
# Set up testing goals: Unless the goals are clear the path cannot be determined. To create an effective digital marketing strategy, begin by setting the QA goals related to operations, UX, functionality, regression, security, and others. Each testing process should be planned, defined, communicated, and properly documented. The strategy should be able to answer the following queries:
- Name and type of product to be tested
- Which part(s) of the product should be tested?
- How the parts should be tested – manually or automation?
- What should be the test metrics?
- What should be the start and end criteria?
# Form the test team: Post deciding on the type of tests to be done, it is time to form a team of QA specialists. The team members should be chosen based on their test expertise and knowledge of programming languages. The latter comes in handy for writing test automation scripts. Importantly, your test team members may have the best web design and UI skills but they need to be reoriented to test the user experience.
It is better to use testers who did not work on developing the product as they can bring a fresh perspective and look at things differently. For example, developers-cum-testers may think of a feature as intuitive since they have been using it for days whereas the same may be difficult for the end-user to understand. In the era of globalization, digital products should be tested for an international audience. So, ensure the usability testing is done by the native users to find the kind of issues that are location-specific.
# Specify when to test: Incorporating the testing process at the right stage in the SDLC is crucial to get effective results. It must be decided in advance whether to implement digital QA testing after the integration of a new feature, at every stage of the development process, or at the end of development. Remember, an effective QA strategy should be a combination of high intention, sincere efforts, intelligent direction, and skilful execution.
# Specify devices to test: Bugs or glitches do not spare specific devices and so, it is necessary to test as many devices as possible. Also, bugs may be partial to certain configurations. For example, there may not be any bugs in an Android phone with the latest OS update but may be in plenty in the older OS. And as the older Android device may be used by thousands of users, any bug can play havoc. Further, the market has thousands of devices with many OS variants and versions and it is practically impossible to test each one of them. Hence, it is important to select devices for testing that are used by most number of target users. This information can be obtained by conducting market and user tendency analysis.
# Scenario-based or exploratory testing: The former is about testing each function of the product based on some preset parameters. It is a good testing option to ensure the smooth execution of various functions. Exploratory testing, on the other hand, lets QA specialists find bugs while exploring the product or service.
Conclusion
In addition to the above steps, the bugs identified should be properly noted, described, tracked, analyzed, and fixed. Once the steps of digital QA and testing are selected, conducting digital testing shall be a breeze. And it is only through a robust testing mechanism that an organization can address the expectations of users and stay competitive.
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