Why is Test Advisory needed to set up a Testing Centre of Excellence?

 

The global IT landscape is in a state of flux due to the advent of new technologies and methodologies, changing customer preferences for better quality products, the emergence of newer cyber security threats, and rising competitiveness. To meet such challenges, enterprises should possess and ensure streamlined processes, quality software applications, quick decision-making, accelerated time-to-market, and a better customer feedback loop, among others. Traditional QA paradigms are woefully short to meet such challenges and do not have the capacity to keep pace with the new realities of the day. This is where a Testing Centre of Excellence (TCoE) can help enterprises to gain a holistic insight into the processes and operations. It can ensure the quality of software systems across the value chain, reduce operating costs, and quickly develop and deliver software applications that are customized to the needs of the market.

A TCoE can deliver proven results in terms of optimal performance, better alignment between IT and operations, better choice and usage of test automation tools, and increased QA efficiency across processes and functions. The testing centre of excellence can function as an integrated command centre using the latest testing methodology and practices, test automation tools, and metrics to foster efficiency into the testing environment. It allows the management to gain insights into quality across SDLC and take suitable risk-based deployment decisions. At the software testing centre of excellence, the team of specialists performs multiple roles and draws insights into the challenges and goals of software development, testing, and delivery.

Why does your organization need a test centre of excellence?

A testing centre of excellence can help an organization to achieve its quality testing goals, seamlessly and efficiently. Its need arises because:

·         The QA processes are aligned to specific project goals instead of the overall organizational goals.

·         Projects face high training costs due to the unavailability of QA specialists with proper domain knowledge.

·         The aim to reduce testing time without impacting the quality of systems.

·         Absence of a standardized QA process or methodology.

·         Projects suffer from defects and missed deadlines.

·         Use of dated QA testing trends instead of the latest ones.

·         Lack of continuous improvement in the Agile-DevOps mold.

·         Every project team reinvents the wheel instead of leveraging tools, components, and test scripts from a centralized repository.

Test advisory to set up a QA centre of excellence

The roadmap to set up a transformative TCoE may have the following elements.

Timeline and scope: Identify and define the activities, scope, and timelines for implementing the setup including the earmarking of transition, stabilization, and operational phases.

Goal setting: Set goals for activities covering areas like test automation, test environment, test processes, and governance.

Interface: Decide on the broad parameters and outcomes when the test centre of excellence interfaces with sundry quality initiatives, management, projects, and service providers.

Training: Assess the requirement of skills, identify resources followed by the hiring and training of such resources.

Core team: Since the QA process driven by an efficient and functional software testing centre of excellence would require proper control and management, a core team should be formed. The team comprising SMEs can be for areas like test automation, asset management, and governance, among others.

Tools: Identify the tools addressing the testing imperatives. Choose the tools based on their cost and maintainability.

Communication: Make sure the TCoE concept is backed by the management and every department in the organization is on-board. This is important for the success of this initiative.

Automation: All repeatable tasks should be automated and the reuse of test cases to the extent possible should be ensured in order to optimize cost and time.

Governance: Integrate the testing centre of excellence services into the IT structure of governance after defining the KPIs. Make sure to align the KPIs to the organizational and project objectives comprising the level of quality, cost optimization, flexibility, speed, and agility. The focus on the governance aspect means a continuous evaluation of the test processes, standards, and tools.

Conclusion

Delivering TCoE solutions can help organizations in reducing their cost of operations, fostering agility for the QA processes, and establishing a metrics-driven continuous improvement process, among others. Setting up a TCoE might seem a herculean task at the outset but with proper planning, investment in resources and tools, and training, the benefits can be visible in the long run. It can increase the overall quality of applications and reduce the time of delivery – all guided by a competent team of QA specialists. 

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https://www.sooperarticles.com/technology-articles/software-articles/why-test-advisory-needed-set-up-testing-centre-excellence-1786046.html

 

How to prepare for Security Testing

 

The advancements in digital technologies are matched by an increase in the incidences of cyber security. Threats from hackers are all-pervasive and it appears they can wreak havoc at their time and place of choosing. However, there are two sides to a coin. First, hackers seem to be one step ahead of software developers and have the technical wherewithal to break into the software architecture at will. On the other hand, most software applications are vulnerable to hacking as they have inadequate defences and do not mandatorily follow security testing in the SDLC. The result of not performing application security testing by many enterprises shows in the form of rising incidences of data breach.

According to statistics, around 7 million data records are compromised each day taking the annual figure to 2.55 billion (Source: Varonis). Also, the world economy is going to cough up around $6 trillion annually by 2021 on account of cybercrime damages (Source: Cybersecurity Ventures.) These statistics are alarming enough for every stakeholder to strengthen the cybersecurity measures. No one can hide behind the thought that ‘we are too insignificant for the hackers to attack us’ anymore. So, in the ultimate analysis, it is finally a choice between creating and implementing an application security testing strategy or waiting for the hackers to play havoc. 

Why security testing?

It is a type of testing in the SDLC where testers aim at identifying flaws or vulnerabilities in the architecture of a software application. Security testing ensures the application remains protected from cyber-attacks and continues to perform the intended functionalities. The six basic elements to be covered by the security testing services include confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, resilience, and non-repudiation.

With an increase in online transactions using web portals and mobile applications, cyber intruders are on the lookout for vulnerabilities in software. Thus, a dynamic application security testing ensures potential vulnerabilities are identified and plugged before the application reaches the end-users. Further, any software security testing exercise can pre-empt the following possibilities:

• Losing the trust of customers
• Downtime and latency faced by the application or system resulting in not meeting the delivery schedules
• Expenses on restoring services including taking backups etc
• Additional cost incurred in making the application secure against future attacks
• Legal suits filed by regulatory agencies, clients, or customers for not upholding adequate security measures

Types of security threats

There are many types of cyber security threats that hackers use to exploit the vulnerabilities in a web or mobile application.

SQL Injection: Malicious SQL statements are entered into an input field to get critical information from the database.

Privilege Elevation: Hackers use an account on the application to upgrade their privileges to a higher level.

Denial of Service (DoS): The hacker manipulates the system, application, or network to deny the availability of resources to legitimate users.

URL Manipulation: The process involves the manipulation of the URL query strings to capture critical information. It takes place when the application passes information between the client and server by using the HTTP GET method.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): This type of vulnerability allows hackers to inject client-side script into pages to trick users into clicking on the URL.

Devising a security testing strategy

To plan, prepare, and implement dynamic application security testing in the SDLC, the following approach can be followed.

Understanding the security architecture: Begin with understanding the IT architecture, business requirements, threats, and security objectives of the organization. Every factor or requirement needed to ensure PCI compliance should be considered during the planning phase.

Analysis of security architecture: Analyze the application’s security requirements including the vulnerabilities.

Classification of testing: Get information about the software application and network in terms of their hardware configuration, operating systems, and technology used. Thereafter, classify the security risks and vulnerabilities based on the aforementioned elements.

Threat modelling: Prepare a threat profile of the application based on the information collected for classification (mentioned above.)

Planning for the test: After identifying the vulnerabilities and security threats, prepare a test plan and traceability matrix to address them.

Selecting a tool: Test automation becomes critical to identify glitches or flaws, which otherwise cannot be done manually. To execute the test cases quickly, a reliable testing tool should be chosen.

Test case execution: Execute the test cases including the regression ones to identify defects, quickly, accurately, and consistently.

Documentation: Study the test reports generated by the test automation tool to understand the vulnerabilities, risks, open issues, and threats.

Conclusion

Security testing has become a critical requirement in the DevSecOps-led model of software development. It ensures the identification (and subsequent fixing) of vulnerabilities or security-related risks in any software application. It also enforces software applications’ adherence to established security protocols.

Original Article Source:
https://devdojo.com/hemanthkumar989/the-main-elements-of-security-testing

How to Build an Effective Digital Testing Strategy

 

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.

Article original Source:

https://www.sooperarticles.com/technology-articles/software-articles/how-build-effective-digital-testing-strategy-1784046.html

Why you shouldn't skip Compatibility Testing for your Applications?

Software applications lie at the core of any IT infrastructure and help the latter to function as per expectations. These help organizations and enterprises to achieve their digital transformational goals including the delivery of superior customer experiences. To ensure such applications deliver value for money and do not run the risk of any failure, they are subjected to several rounds of testing. Importantly, the customers of today access applications on a plethora of device platforms, operating systems, databases, browsers, and networks, among others. They expect the applications to perform uniformly across platforms and can summarily discard them in the event of any malfunction or quality issue. Compatibility testing entails the testing of software applications across digital environments to validate their performance. It is a necessary cog in the wheel for digital transformation implementation.

Why mobile compatibility testing?

Mobile applications have become a rage among people on-the-go. They have brought the fruits of digitization to the people at large and enabled them to buy products, access information, or avail services, quickly, securely, and conveniently. However, the biggest challenge testers face in validating any software is the multiplicity of devices. For example, the number of mobile devices is projected to touch a whopping 16.8 billion in 2023 (source: Statista.) These devices are of different brands, features, hardware configuration, software and firmware requirements, screen size, and network operators, among others.

So, not only the mobile devices have issues of compatibility with their competing brands but can have differences with their brand line as well. This is where a special type of testing called mobile compatibility testing comes into play. It focuses on testing the compatibility of mobile apps across device platforms, software, firmware, operating systems, browsers, databases, and networks, among others. An application compatibility testing process ensures the seamless performance of application across these digital elements.

Types of compatibility testing

Any device compatibility testing allows developers and testers to achieve improved application performance. It consists of two types:

Forward testing: The testing validates the compatibility of an application with newer versions of operating systems.

Backward testing: Here, the testing process validates the compatibility of the application designed with the latest environment version with that of its older version. For example, if the backward testing of an application is conducted for Windows operating system, its compatibility should be tested for both the latest Windows 10 version as well as the older ones like Windows XP, Windows 7 etc.

What happens if compatibility testing of applications is skipped?

Customer experience has become the differentiator for software applications to be adopted or discarded. It is directly related to the performance of any digital company in the market. Simply put, if the customer experience offered by any product is below par, the company can lose its position in the market. And one of the prominent attributes leading to excellent customer experiences is the product’s compatibility across platforms. These platforms could be the operating systems, their newer versions, browsers, hardware configuration of devices, and mobile networks. If device compatibility testing is skipped, the results could be telling for the application and its brand:

Differences in UI: Each device has its configuration for the UI interface to run smoothly. However, it would require a particular look, feel, font size, resolution, and alignment for any application to work. In the absence of any compatibility testing exercise, this aspect of the application can remain unresolved for different devices.

Persistence of quality issues: Compatibility testing helps in identifying glitches in a software application, which otherwise can render it unsuitable to function across devices. Further, if such glitches are not fixed in time before delivery, the cost of fixing them later can be high. This can hit the profitability of any business big time.

Hits user expectations: The success of digital transformation solutions depends, to a large extent, to their compatibility across digital environments. Users are wont to expect applications that perform seamlessly on multiple platforms. If performance slackens due to issues of usability, stability, and scalability, then user expectations can take a massive hit. And in a world of tough competition where users look for fast loading, reasonably priced, feature-rich, and functional applications to meet their expectations, any lack of user experience can sound the death knell for that application.

Conclusion

Digital transformation has become the key enabler for enterprises to stay competitive and meet their objectives. However, the software applications at the core of such transformation need to be compatible across every digital environment. To ensure the same, digital compatibility testing needs to be pursued vigorously across the SDLC.

Functionality Testing: The Imperative for your Software Application Quality

The user expectations for any software product are changing fast. Therefore, the risk of releasing any software application with glitches can be detrimental to its performance in the market. To ensure that the software meets all its desired requirements and delivers the best user experience, it should be subjected to rigorous software functionality testing. Here, the QA specialists validate the software for features or functions that were agreed upon by the client. Functional testing services focus on meeting customer requirements/experience rather than customer expectations (non-functional testing.) To cite an example, an eCommerce store selling apparels should offer a comprehensive view of the store and individual items. If the same is not offered owing to glitches, the customer experience can go for a toss.

A functional QA specialist analyzes the individual units of an application and their integration touchpoints with other units. This is of utmost importance as most glitches make their way into an application at the integration touchpoints.

Highlights of software functionality testing

In this type of testing, the QA specialists verify the presence of features or functionalities in the application as per the specifications provided by the client. The highlights of functional testing for web or mobile applications are:

·        The testing should be executed early as opposed to non-functional testing.

·        Both manual and functional test automation can be a part of this testing. However, manual testing is relatively easy to conduct in this type of testing.

·        It tests and validates the functional aspects of the software product.

·        Examples are unit testing, sanity testing, smoke testing, user acceptance testing, black-box testing, white box testing, and regression testing.

Functional testing: the procedure

The process of executing this type of testing is as follows:

·        Understand and analyze the functional specifications given by the client

·        Identify the test data

·        Ascertain the expected results based on the selected input values

·        Conduct the test using test cases

·        Compare the results – expected vs actual

·        Analyze any incongruities and send them to the developers for fixing

Why is software/mobile functionality testing imperative for an application?

In a day and age where the quality of an application overrides all other aspects as far as making it market-ready is concerned, functional testing has become imperative. It delivers a slew of advantages including:

Functional suitability

This confirms whether the web or mobile application executes its basic functions. The testing identifies the functional flaws and highlights the risks of not fixing them. The testing of functions should depend on their risk possibilities and then prioritized. This means more focus on functions that carry more risks rather than omitting them from testing.

Seamless interaction with better integration: The dynamic nature of today’s applications means they should offer seamless interaction with other applications. For example, an eCommerce application should ensure secured payments, which can only be possible with better integration with the payment gateways. What if the customer could not make the payment due to poor connectivity with the payment gateway? No points for guessing, the customer experience will be severely dented.

Interoperability: Another aspect of customer experience is the ability of the software application in offering an omnichannel experience. In other words, the application should be easily accessible on a computer, tablet, or smartphone, and across operating systems and browsers. To check interoperability, the automated functional testing of application should be conducted across devices and other environments.

Early detection of glitches: Functional automation testing helps the QA team to test the code repeatedly. This way, any hidden glitches can be identified quickly and early on in the development process. In the Agile-DevOps model of development and testing, any early detection and fixing of glitches would mean quicker release of the software to the market and cost savings.

Changes not impacting the overall application: An application can undergo specific changes to its features or functionalities depending on the market/client demand. Regression testing can ensure the changes do not impact the overall application. Here, through functional test automation, the specific change area is tested instead of the whole application thereby saving time and effort. 

Conclusion

Continuous and end-to-end testing of applications has become imperative to ensure the quality of any web or mobile application. In this context, functional testing of applications incorporating test automation can help detect resident glitches early and quickly. Its successful implementation ensures the software application meets the client’s requirements and delivers superior customer experiences.

How to Ensure Flawless Performance of your eCommerce Application

Digital transformation has become imperative for businesses including the ones in the retail sector to remain competitive and deliver superior customer experiences. The growth in eCommerce has seen a phenomenal increase in the past few years with customers taking to online shopping with vengeance. According to statistics, eCommerce has seen a quantum jump from $1336 billion in 2014 to $4206 billion in 2020. It is further expected to reach $6542 billion by 2023 (Source Statista.) Since so much is riding on these companies, they should ensure the customer experience to remain top-notch. And when it comes to delivering superior customer experiences, a host of factors lies behind. These include performance, throughput, seamless navigability, attractive images galleries, and strong and secure payment gateways, among others.

Of late, eCommerce companies have entered into the domain of mobile applications given the huge number of customers using such apps on their smartphones on the go. The convenience offered by such apps has made them highly sought-after by the customers. However, all said and done, these apps are vulnerable to both performance and security issues. Performance-wise, the apps may slow down while loading or transacting, give erroneous counts, become non-responsive across devices, and many more. On the other hand, security has arguably become the biggest issue to plague the apps. Again, if statistics are referred then the average cost of security breaches will cost economies a whopping $150 million by the end of the year 2020 (Source: Juniper Research.) So, the need of the hour for enterprises developing such applications is to invest in eCommerce performance testing.

Why eCommerce performance testing?

Since eCommerce applications have interfaces with various financial instruments like bank accounts, credit/debit cards, or digital wallets, among others, they need to be secured. Also, since these applications deal with inventory management in real-time in both B2B and B2C environments, they should be tested on various parameters. Let us understand why businesses need to employ a performance testing strategy for eCommerce applications.

# Various platforms: eCommerce applications are accessed from various device platforms such as smartphones, desktops, laptops, notebooks, and tablets. Since these devices have different hardware and software configurations, the performance of any eCommerce application will be determined on the strength and capacity of these configurations. However, with the performance testing of eCommerce applications, the seamless performance of such applications can be ensured to a greater degree. And since performance is directly related to customer experience, the more the merrier.

# Different browsers: eCommerce applications contain rich images, social media plugins, product descriptions, and payment gateways, which help in converting visitors into customers. Since these applications containing such elements open in different browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, etc., they need to function seamlessly. With a stringent performance testing exercise, any glitch preventing the smooth functioning of such applications can be identified and fixed.

# Load and stress thresholds: eCommerce applications, especially in a B2C environment, handle a lot of traffic during certain times of the year – black Friday sales, Christmas sales etc. If their performance during such times of high traffic goes down the customer experience invariably takes a hit and brands end up earning flak for themselves. Further, the functionality of such applications can often be affected by the customer-friendly designs (read rich images,) which can only be validated through eCommerce application testing. The testing would confirm whether the functionality of an eCommerce application performs to its optimum when the traffic is very high or there are issues related to network or slow server speed. A robust performance testing approach can bring about parity between customer-friendly designs and performance of the application during extreme load conditions.

# Fixing glitches: In the highly competitive business environment of today where customer experience is arguably the best differentiator, ensuring the performance of an application is critical. If an eCommerce application is delivered to the market without proper testing then the resident glitches can play havoc. In addition to affecting the performance of the application in terms of lowered throughput, navigability, functionality, or usability, they can cause security issues. For example, any vulnerability within the application can be exploited by hackers to steal sensitive financial information like credit card or bank account details. The customers can end up losing money – a distinct possibility. So, if proper security and eCommerce performance testing in the Agile-DevOps mould are implemented in the SDLC, the glitches can be identified and fixed early.

# Brand equity: A glitch-prone eCommerce application can discredit a brand when dissatisfied customers vent their anger in the form of lawsuits or negative reviews. And when the entire strategy of businesses revolves around popularizing the brand, such a situation of losing brand equity can come as a big jolt. It is only through implementing performance testing that businesses can avoid getting hit in terms of brand equity.

What performance testing strategy should be followed?

Testers should consider the below-mentioned factors while planning eCommerce performance testing.

Performance across geographies: Ecommerce applications are accessed by customers across the length and breadth of a country or even continents. Testers should ensure the performance of such applications is not affected by the geographic location of the customers. This involves testing the key workflows and functionalities.

Page loading speed: It is said that most customers (around 57% as per stats) tend to discard an application if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. E-retailers should ensure that the page load speed of their eCommerce applications should not suffer, especially during peak traffic. Using eCommerce load testing, QA specialists can validate the performance of an application by creating virtualized users across geographies, device platforms, and networks.

The steps involved in conducting performance testing are:

·       Building a test environment

·       Selecting the performance metrics to be tested

·       Writing the test automation script, selecting the tool, and execute

·       Reviewing the test result

Conclusion

With growing digitization of enterprises, especially of retail, the usage of eCommerce applications will only grow further. To ensure their performance remains top-notch and security intact, they should be subjected to extensive performance testing. This is important to retain customer trust and enhance brand equity.