How critical is Continuous Testing for Implementing Digital Transformation Strategies
This blog post is a collaboration between GenRocket and Cigniti.
The global smartphone market is booming and the number of users is growing exponentially. Consequently, there is a flood of applications that are being introduced in the marketplace. It could be gauged from the sheer number. The Apple App store has about 2 million applications and Google Play has over 2.2 million Apps. Digital Transformation powered by Digital Technologies is impacting every aspect of user expectations and experience. This just intensifies the role of Quality Assurance and Testing.
Gartner has estimated that by 2017 there will be over 268 billion mobile downloads, generating an income of $77 billion in 2017. This is phenomenal. Applications are being released constantly in the digital sphere, where there is a need for regular updates. This requires constant vigilance and rigorous testing to get the application market ready.
For instance, Apple recently launched the next version of iOS that brings a much more responsive Siri for its users, an updated messages app, a revamped Apple Pay, and much more. Continuous Testing and Continuous Deployment is required to bring such updates to the market. Digital Transformation reinvents the way applications are being tested.
Digital Transformation implies leveraging digital technologies to accelerate business transformation, and in a way revamping processes to make the organization more competitive. It is a strategic move that an organization must consider while keeping the business objectives into perspective.
Continuous Testing is part of the DevOps approach that is implemented to ensure Continuous Delivery and Deployment. It is a process adopted for executing automated tests for faster response and turnaround time. This enables businesses and teams to deal with risks and take care of them on an instant basis.
Continuous Testing leverages agile methodologies and approach to execute end-to-end testing of applications. The objective is to enable continuous software delivery, sustain quality, and accelerate time to market.
How can Continuous Testing accelerate Digital Transformation for enterprises?
Accelerates the release cycle, gives competitive advantage
Continuous Testing cuts down the development cycle, so the frequency of releases increase. This helps businesses to reach faster to the market, as the software development cycle gets a lot shorter. The teams are able to release the code at any point during the project. This implies that there is always scope for continuous development and deployment.
In such a viable scenario, enterprises can remain competitive and ready to respond in real-time for any kind of risks.
Identifies defects/bugs faster, enabling cost-effectiveness
Testing and development approaches are reformed to identify bugs faster and bring down business risks. Continuous Testing makes the development process collaborative and receptive to change in the production environment. This helps identify defects quicker in the overall lifecycle, making the process cost-effective. Responsibility to ensure quality is distributed and the onus is on every member of the team.
Continuous Testing enables more experimentation
Businesses are embracing Digital technologies to get more agile and successful in the competitive marketplace. They are breaking away from their legacy systems and are transforming. Continuous Testing builds a development environment that encourages innovation. As the team is able to release the code at any given time, the changes can be done right in production.
Whether it’s a failure or success, it can be determined then and there. A new OS version, a driverless car, a delivery drone, or any technology platform can be experimented effectively with the support of automated Continuous Testing.
Continuous Testing helps jumpstart DevOps
Continuous Testing is perceived as the initial step towards taking the DevOps approach. It encourages continuous feedback that is essential for the DevOps approach to show tangible results. An automated response at every milestone is critical to step ahead faster and take corrective measures.
DevOps is predominantly an organization’s cultural shift towards more and more collaboration between Development and Operations. This encourages continuity and speeds up the development cycle. This is key to Digital Transformation, as it involves leveraging digital technologies for business and process transformation. Continuous Testing and DevOps makes the process faster and seamless.
Automation of Continuous Testing
Continuous Testing approach can change, depending on the objectives and the expected results. The approach can vary across projects and organizations. The core objective is to test more, test early, and test faster.
Automation helps in making the testing process repetitive and consistent. It eventually helps to pace up the development cycle. Automation is implemented to provide qualitative assessment of the business risk and conduct result-oriented tasks to mitigate the risks through the development cycle.
For instance, a gaming application is tested for displaying a particular type of behaviour over a particular action from the user. It has to be tested across various platforms, varying bandwidths, or any possible scenario in the production environment.
Automation helps in making the testing process recurring and helps identify defects over a period of time and across scenarios.
The objective of Digital Transformation is to provide an enhanced customer experience in a highly competitive marketplace. There is no scope for error, but if the error is detected, the testing and development platform has to be robust enough to bounce back and get operational.
Automation brings tremendous benefits for digitally engaged organizations, as more and more manual tasks get automated so there is enough buffer for high performing technical folks to engage in innovative tasks. For instance, repetitive actions such as Configuration Management, Deployment, Test Data Management, and repetitive testing processes get automated. This adds value to the organization, as it encourages innovation and sustainable growth.
Getting Started with Continuous Testing with Test Data Management
If you want to enable your company to get started with Continuous Testing you need to start somewhere. Poor access to test data is one of the biggest roadblocks for teams to move to automated testing. We recommend taking a look at GenRocket’s test data generation system so you can start Continuous Testing.
In Conclusion
Success of Continuous Testing further depends on a conducive organizational structure, implementation of relevant and trending technical practices, and agile mechanisms. Everything comes down to suitable leadership and restructuring of the teams in a much more collaborative way.
Digital Transformation involves multiple connected nodes that have to ultimately reach a particular goal. It needs continuous optimization of processes, and various technology platforms. A robust digital transformation strategy has to create capabilities to effectively leverage new technologies and reinforce their impact faster, better, and in a much more innovative manner.
Authors
Komal Lopez | Cigniti Technologies
Komal Lopez works with Cigniti Technologies and is instrumental in helping enterprises take better decisions related to Quality Assurance products, tools and services by leveraging research and content. She specializes in writing about technology trends, testing trends and has been in the Marketing and Communications industry for over a decade. Connect with her at komal.lopez@cigniti.com
Stephen Chisa | GenRocket
Stephen is a product manager at GenRocket where he thinks of new ways to how to solve the test data challenges faced by testing organizations. You can connect with him at stephen@genrocket.com
