Measurement and Metrics in Test Management

We can’t control things which we can’t measure.

When software is under development, testers need tocontinually test and measure its quality and report the status to the concerned people. They also need to evaluate test effectiveness as a guide for improvement. None of these tasks would be possible without measurement and metrics in test management. To meet set expectations in terms of software quality, you simply can’t ignore their importance.

Importance of Measurement and Metrics in testing

With the help of well-established measurements and metrics, a test analyst can clearly track and communicate quality outcomes to the management. Improper establishment of these indicators lead to a purely subjective assessment of the software quality which in turn can develop some major disputes at the end of the SDLC. Some of the common areas where measurement and metrics can be applied are:

Schedule of the project
Coverage
Proposed and actual cost
Workload vis-à-vis resource usage
Project risk and product risk
Inadequacies

Measurement and metrics are simple, easily collectable, easily communicable and only focused on products and processes. These indicators act as advance warning systems that supply information on when to make a pause and look back for any necessary corrective measure.

Key Metrics & how they are calculated

Test metrics help us to measure and subsequently perform the following aspects:

Understand the required corrective measures
Decide on the subsequent phase of activities
Decide whether a procedural or technological change is required

Key test metrics are classified as the following types:

Base Metrics: These are obtained from the data by test analyst during test case development and execution.
Calculated Metrics: These are obtained from the data collected in base metrics and are generally tracked for reporting purpose.

Proper setting of these metrics help you get a good control of both quality and estimates. The number of defects can be measured and remedial actions can be taken right away. Though Prototype and Agile models are used in testing most projects these days, the Waterfall model still holds good for smaller projects with straightforward and testable requirements in a stable (not dynamic) setting.

Tracking and sharing significant agile metrics greatly help in enlightening the progress as well as setbacks of the development team and in lowering confusion throughout the SDLC. Some key metrics in an agile environment are:

Sprint Burndown: It tracks the work completed throughout a sprint.
Epic and Version Burndown: These delivery vehicles track the advancement of development over significantly greater bodies of work than sprint Burndown.
Velocity: It stands for the average volume of work completed by a scrum team during a sprint.
Control Chart: It measures cycle time of issues.
Cumulative Flow Diagram: It helps to ensure the consistency of the work flow across the team.

Following factors should be considered before identifying correct business and agile metrics:

Define the objective for metrics
Examine the cost benefit facets of each metrics in accordance with the SDLC
Introduce all relevant metrics based on the project requirement

To understand the calculation process of test metrics, the following example of obtaining percentage of “passed test cases” can be taken:

Test cases passed = (No. of test cases passed / No. of total test cases written) x 100

Similarly, other parameters like test cases executed, test cases failed etc can be calculated as well.

Measurement Criteria

Ambiguity should be avoided as much as possible to obtain correct measurement. Following standardized criteria should be considered to attain unambiguous measurement:

Existence of a common baseline
Measurers should be allowed to use the associated reference concept thus be able to be on same page
A point of reference for measurers to substantiate their measurement results

Key Benefits

Measurement and metrics provide a myriad of benefits in test management. Some of the most important ones are:

Improve project planning
Help in cost savings by averting defects
Help to analyze associated risks in a better manner
Improve ROI of test automation
Facilitate the team to understand whether the expected quality is achieved
Enhance coordination between testing coverage, complexities and risks of the systems

TechArcisInc: A Different Approach to Software Testing

With TechArcis, you can leverage the defined metrics to measure quality, cost, reliability and speed of testing service delivery accurately. This will let you set up a software quality measurement culture across your company. Once your quality measurement processes reach satisfactory maturity levels, test specialists at TechArcis can help you in implementing more relevant metrics dynamically, which would facilitate collection of additional information that would come handy in carrying our further testing improvements.

Are you ready to measure the quality and ROI of your testing efforts?

Implementation Performance Engineering Using Shift-Left?

Practices in the software world including testing are changing at a fast pace. In the beginning, testing was done at the end of the development phase like a reaction to what the developers had put forth. Not anymore. These days testing is involved from the start in every possible way right from the use of tools to the methodology to using user feedback etc. Having said this, let’s take a look at some of the factors that have contributed to this shift in focus and those that will help you move up in the competition.

Testing Transformation for all companies: How to change the way you perform testing today

SMAC testing

Social media, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies together are referred as SMAC. It is much in demand these days because of the significant role it plays in improving operational efficiency and strengthening the user-designer link. Mobile, cloud and social media are an integral part of all businesses and thanks to these; a small error in the program or the system can be exposed to a global audience. Testing on these platforms has grown in a big way with larger amount being allocated to them in the budget.

Adapting Cloud migration

Cloud computing as a concept was not well received initially. However over the last year it has bounced back and at present has a reach of about 32% and growing steadily. Testing in cloud environment is easy from the tester’s point of view as well and organizations will have to equip themselves to make use of this opportunity.

Test automation & its future

When you talk about functional testing, you think about test automation. If programs can be developed which can test the project on their own, then you get improved efficiency. Test automation strategy that can ensure that you get quality software at a much faster pace will definitely put your organization ahead in the competitive market. The framework should be thus developed that it allows testers to test applications in an automated machine but from the user’s perspective

Moving shift left in testing

Shift left is the latest concept to have hit the field of testing and is considered important from the point of quality assurance. It allows testing to be performed earlier in the project lifecycle. On the project timeline, it is literally shifted to the left towards the beginning of the project and hence the term shift left testing. This concept is helpful because it takes care of all the disadvantages that the earlier method of late shifting had. As a result of this –
1. Testers are now more involved in the initial project planning and have a say if they feel that the testing resources seem inadequate.
2. Basic design defects in the project can now be nipped in the bud instead of the earlier methods in which the testers were given the finished project and the whole process had to be reworked after the defect was uncovered.
3. As the project progresses and more and more software programs are integrated into it, debugging by locating and isolating the fault becomes complicated. By shift left testing the tester is involved from almost the beginning so debugging is not as complicated.
4. In the earlier method when testing was done in the end, there was a rush to meet the deadline and launch the program. As a result there was little time to fix the bugs. Most of the times, the project was launched with the bugs and fixing postponed for a later version. This postponement leads to great backlog as far as testing is concerned especially if the project is too large. Shift left testing allows testers enough time and launch a fool proof version.

The days ahead for the testing industry are definitely bright. The testers will have enough and more opportunities at proving themselves in the testing industry which is 13 billion dollar strong and growing every minute.

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Major Impacts of QA & Testing on Digital Transformation Arena of 2024

Gradually advancing digital technologies are not only giving the industries the needed thrive but the society is also included in this wave of digital transformation and adoption. To meet the expectations of digitally equipped customers, all the industries and specifically IT is greatly dependent on the Quality Assurance (QA) and testing to ensure the product quality and user experience is good. QA and Testing used to be a rigorous and time-consuming process, but now we have a simple solution to it, that involves using an agile project management and product development methodology and deploying software in a DevOps environment where testing is embedded in the software development process.

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Because customers are getting more and more connected with businesses in various ways than they did earlier (Mobile, Web, iPads, Voice, Smart TV’s etc.), your IT department needs to take a different approach to delivering applications and test them on Mobile Devices, Desktop and other gadgets that customers use. UI and customer experience is key to client satisfaction. To ensure a strong foothold in the rapidly improving digital journey, DevOps model is the simple and effective mode to streamline the product development process.

Today companies are facing two main challenges, staying at par with all the modern technologies and to render high-quality customer experience. Delivering standard quality applications which are highly stable and change the way customers interact with the digital arena have become must-have for companies. Quality assurance aids organizations in dealing with these challenges, and provide a seamless experience to their customers. But we aren’t talking about your everyday QA here. New age Quality Assurance services now need to be in sync with digital behaviors and all touch points of your customers. This will help enterprises introduce value into the entire customer chain.

As a result of the digital transformation, there is an increased risk of cyber-crimes and cyber-attacks. It becomes really important for users to protect all their assets and resources in the new digital landscape. So it is important to protect the user by doing proper security and compliance testing. It is a good practice and in some industries, it is mandatory to publish/flash the risk, if any, to the user before they get into any particular digital application.

The main goal of the organization should be to make sure that all the channels of interactions offer a stable experience. Both the physical channels such as stores and digital channels such as phones and wearable should be able to provide the customer with a connected and consistent set of features. Hence it is also the performance that counts a lot.

QA should be able to prepare high-quality frameworks around security, privacy and data integrity and those should be a part of your solution. Enterprises should have a digital assurance platform (Production like environment) in order to full-fill the critical role of QA during digital transformation. This platform should provide a set of assets and other reusable enablers which can be used to improve the efficiency of testing processes and quality assurance. The digital support providing platform must be able to cover all the digital value chains, which should begin with the content creation which is followed by development, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and delivery.

Without right QA strategy, the investments made in the IT infrastructure, tools and other resources cannot take organizations too far. For improving the customer experience and user satisfaction, QA enterprises must provide them trustable products and services. QA team must step up to integrate testing of embedded software and devices as well as IT solutions and should be able to move beyond the traditional functional testing.

Nowadays companies have gone past the age where they wait for 9 to 12 months before releasing an update or a new product. Today, companies must release product updates constantly and keep it up to date with the new features. This takes things to a whole new level as this keeps them on their toes at all times. In the digital era, the timeline would be further reduced. So it is crucial for the organization to adopt DevOps based QA strategy which supports the fast changes.

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In conclusion, we would say:

Enterprises QA and testing services must advance and adapt to the constantly changing digital transformation journey for being effective and spot on. In order to have all the characteristics and behavior of an ideal organization, you must focus on, and maintain, the quality of all the digitally complex product implementations. You should also include services and support for multiple platforms, services, and applications while keeping in mind the external conditions that might affect the customer life-cycle. QA and testing should be involved in the overall SDLC and follow in-sprint automation and DevOps implementation.

Among some of the top Agile testing companies as TechArcis, and we are the master in this field offering seamless Agile testing, DevOps, Test Automation, Automation as a Service, Mobile testing, security testing, are a few to name. Each and every function in business at various levels whether it’s on a local or on a wider aspect needs flawless rendering and we are here to help you. IT, health, finance, education, retail, automotive, manufacturing, telecom, travel and transportation and more is served by the firm, the complete process performed is under the testing specialist in an Agile environment which enables you to deliver quality, accuracy along with speed.

So now you have a great opportunity of free-consultation @Techarcis and get the complete information about your software testing requirements.

Data Generation – Best practices in Test Data Generation

With emerging trends, the technology is also shifting from the code generation (data generation ) paradigm to the data model. The main idea behind test data generation is testing the competence of a software or an app. Testing an app with real data is important to bridge with real-time scenarios and make the necessary changes accordingly.

Classification of Test Data Generators

Test Data Generators can be broadly classified into:

Arbitrary Test Data Generator: As the name suggests, it is a random test data generator. It is the most uncomplicated data generation technique and is based on prospects. Thus, it can’t achieve high quality coverage of test data.

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Aim-Oriented Test Data Generator: Here, input set is generated for any path, instead of entry to exit block of code. Control flow graph plays a very vital role in these types of test data generation technique, thus reducing a probability-prone and infeasible path based test data generation and providing an opportunity of direct search.

Path-Oriented Test Data Generator: This is the best test data generation technique among the lot. In this, an unsurpassed specific path is offered, instead of multiple paths for a control flow. This technique is centralized on fault based testing. Another name for this type of testing is Mutation Testing. The changes done in the code after this type of test are called ‘mutants’.

Intelligent Test Data Generator: This technique draws upon the complicated analysis of code to pave way for the search of test data. Here, test data generation method is utilized along with the comprehensive analysis of the code. This technique involves thorough analysis to anticipate different upcoming situations.

Test Data Generator Life Cycle

Steps involved in Test Data Generation are as follows:

Control Flow Graph Creation: It consists of the representation of possible transfer of control.
Path Selection: In this step, the path of program – especially the control flow, is identified.
Input Data Derivation: After the selection of path, set of realistic input data are generated for the selected path, determining the control flow. This is the test data generation step.

A test data generator takes help of Program Analyzer for the same. Program Analyzer has many tasks to complete during the process. The Program Analyzer firstly retro inspects the control flow graph and approaches the path selector to gather the set of selected paths. Again, it’s the Program Analyzer which mulls over the control flow graph and data dependence and approaches Test Data Generator to generate test data set for each flow. Test Data Generator also consults the Path selector before test data set generation to ensure the authenticity of available path information.

Best Practices for Test Data Generation

Naming Canon: The name of the test data should be in accordance of module name or functional area to make the reference very clear to the future onlookers.
Test Data Requisites: The expected performance should be clearly mentioned. Dependencies should also be declared with clarity. The functions and modules which will use the test data should be clearly queued as well.
Range of test data: The range should be specified well in advance for each data.
Re usability should be taken care of: The Test data should be written in a way that they can be used in the future too.
Maximum Coverage: Test data should be optimum in number and should have the maximum coverage.
Anon clause should be clear: Changes to be made to test data should be clearly mentioned to be used for later test case in case of identical functionality.
Scope field: The scope field like test boundaries, OS, database types etc. should be clearly declared.
Description: A brief description of test data should be given, which specifies the objective of the test data.

Challenges faced in Test Data Generation

Test data generation is quite complex as there is no standard skeleton for finding out the test data. The following are the various areas which require further study for test data generation:

Arrays and Pointers: The main problem exists during the symbolic execution, especially dynamic allocation of array and pointers and index or array or structure of the input of the pointer.

Objects: The OO features intensify the complexity as objects aredynamic by natureand it’s difficult to find out the exact code that would be called at run time. Use of mutation has been attempted to combat this problem.

Loops: Which path will be followed at the run time always remains a question mark, thus making the entire process of test data generation complex.

Despite these and a few other prevailing problems and challenges, Test Data Generation is making tasks easier with various available possibilities of creating large quantities and/or random data for testing purposes, thus reducing code conversion efforts.

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How can TechArcis assist?

TechArcis has expertise in enabling independent testing services, and is far ahead of the curve in following the process of Continuous testing Integration.

We’re focused on delivering high value added engagements with measurable returns on your investment. Simplify your test data management to reduce your software development and testing costs. Talk to us today

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Why is Big Data a Boon For All the Enterprises? [Updated]

The rate at which data is being created and consumed is incredible to an extent that knows no limit. This data is being created and consumed both by customers as well as businesses. Data is created every second from every corner of the world. According to a survey, the volume of the world’s data doubles every eighteen months. This massive amount of data is referred to as Big Data in technical terms and offers great challenges and opportunities to the businesses globally.

These heaps of data are so enormous that businesses are overwhelmed by the amount of data but are still not satisfied. The urge to collect and utilize the data arises from the tremendous potential of converting opportunities into success stories as big data carries bigger rewards if used properly. To have the desired impact, businesses need to change their perspective and instead of treating data as a business by-product, it should be considered as an asset.

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Global surveys reveal that actually the amount of data is too large for most of the organizations to handle. The competition is too harsh to spare the weak ones in the race and working on irrelevant data may prove disastrous and time wasting for the businesses. Thus the need arises not just to collect the big data but to collect relevant big data and use it wisely for positive results. Hunting for the right type of data at the right time is like searching for a pearl in the sea. According to executives, the IT infrastructure in most of the cases is still underdeveloped to handle such loads of data. This results in strain on the IT infrastructure and also poses threat to the data security.

The idea is to overcome all these challenges and tap on the opportunities as and when they emerge. Big Data is extremely useful in taking strategic decisions as they provide enhanced forecasting measures and minimize the risk & probability factor. Moreover, data is becoming essential for most of the industries to operate and gain a competitive advantage. Sectors like finance are becoming somewhat dependent on data. Furthermore, despite the challenges of the enormous amount of data incoming, reports are that executives demand more sources of data that too at even faster rates.

All businesses aim at earning profits by providing customer satisfaction which can be achieved by understanding the customer expectations. So, basically, this quest for big data is actually an attempt to acquire knowledge about customer tastes and preferences. The perception of the right needs wants and desires of the customers is the first step towards maintaining a healthy customer relationship. With great power comes great responsibility and so with big data comes bigger challenges. Almost all the industries are investing in securing their data.

And this is the part where we can help you in the best possible way. TechArcis services for Big Data and Analytics testing are up to date. We use right tools and technologies that are essential for Big Data Testing and Data Analysis.

In the current scenario, though industries visualize the importance and potential advantages of big data, they are simply unable to handle and manage it. The business impact of Big Data on industries is dependent on how efficiently and effectively is it managed. On one hand, tapping on the right sources of big data can unlock priceless opportunities for the business.

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What You Need to Know? 2024 Mobile App Ecosystem

Mobile apps are gradually furbishing in the midst of technological advancement aura. And when the world is still in a state of adoption of the immersing apps interfaces, the visionaries are looking deeper for the newfangled mobile apps ecosystem. The Google’s deep link initiative with Android Instant Apps, Apple mini-services application via notification at elementary app level and new swift programming language, Cloud and Internet of Things are some of the examples contributing to this changing mobile app ecosystem. So what actually you need to know about this booming Eco-explosion of app world? Here is the answer:

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Why the changes?

Sensibly, we are pretty good in using our mobile apps and love the fact that these are easy to understand and independent of screen sizes; then what the heck are these changes for? Simply because the apps are getting more attention worldwide with an increase in a number of downloads, growth in sizes and the advent of multi-functionalities and features. And, we are yet so far in leveraging the core app experience and sensing the seamless mobile application uses with minimal technical friction and interface resistance. The abundant resources that can empower the mobile app ecosystem and replenish the application environment with latest technology trends and innovation are yet to be integrated. And this is the reason why we are witnessing so many changes happening in the existing mobile app ecosystem.

So what changes we are expecting?

The changes for sure are not in a direction of a complex algorithm that sets the app across the deeper level but instead in a direction that leads to rejuvenation. This allows apps to break the physical store boundaries and scatter all around to creep comfortably into the customer’s life. The wide availability mode will be set around this deconstruction of apps with download optimization and quick response time that fits into the requirement and instant need of users.

As a part of the change, let’s talk about Google’s commendable Android Instant Apps initiative. This enables users to per-use the apps from a link before buying or downloading it from the app stores. This would be really of great help for the one-time applications where users don’t need to download the app on their handsets such as buying entrance tickets, paying for parking etc. These web apps are really creating a fine line in the air where you can launch it from anywhere. Following the changing pedagogy, Apple iOS is also working towards creating a quick access to its iOS applications with smart notification feature. Apple plans to smartly convert notifications into mini-apps and let users float around the widgets quickly and openly. Another thrill in Apple app is ever-shift to Swift programming language that allows developers to create both a mobile app as well as server-side management with an ease of access. This would be a real Eco-change on developers’ part.

Cloud and IoT – The New Wave Technologies

Cloud resources are still to be plow efficiently to yield high results for app industries. In the new environment, it is expected that apps will make full use of Cloud technology. With the cloud support developers will have access to powerful tools, while users will be capable of accessing it from anywhere in faster and easier way than ever before. The hottest trend in the market- Internet of Things is also taking over the app industry. It is expected that around 35 million of devices will be connected to this trillion dollar industry by 2019.

QA & Testing Needs A Facelift Too

Thinking of it, all this sounds pretty convenient. However, with this new app ecosystem in place, enterprises will have to ensure that their testing environment is adaptable to these changes. Thus, QA professionals will now have to upgrade their approach to testing to comply with the compatibility and usability standards of the mobile app ecosystem. They need to perform comprehensive penetration testing, and with the advent of big data environment they need to explore newer ways to test related mobile applications. Enterprise and commercial applications are the major chunk and testing professionals need to focus on usability, security and performance of such trending applications.

New Opportunities for Businesses

Undoubtedly, the new app ecosystem will create exciting growth opportunities for organizations but they need to advance their business processes to exploit this new market. The newer ecosystem will engage more users and dominate the digital interaction in coming years.

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To wrap up all- the mobile app ecosystem is an ever-changing model that entertains the innovation and both the businesses and end-users need to embrace it to get most out of it. Connect with us for a strategy that gets you ready and sustain well in the marketplace.

2020 Challenges in controlling QA and Testing budgets

IT spend on QA and testing has been on the rise since 2012. From 18% and 23% in 2012 and 2013 to 26% and 35% in 2014 and 2015 respectively, it experienced a slight dip in 2016 with the average industry spend in this domain standing at 31%. Though it suggests organizations have somewhat controlled their QA and testing costs, they aren’t yet confident of being in complete control. According to World Quality Report 2015, QA and testing spend is predicted to rise to 40% by 2019, which suggest it to getting out of control.

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Faster deliveries together with agile and DevOps pose a big challenge

With the growing adoption of DevOps and agile, organizations now need quicker deliveries with a continuous stream of updates, which put a lot of pressure on QA and testing teams. In their quest to market a product faster, organizations often suffer from a mismatch between fast development, frequent updates, and a robust quality process. When products are going live on an hourly or a per-minute basis, it puts tremendous pressure on QA and testing teams as they have to select the right areas of focus for testing, deal with several test iterations and even battle with a lack of adequate skills and appropriate test environment for the same. Thus with faster and shorter development cycles together with the need to test more and often are major contributors to increasing costs of testing and QA. Spending to get the next generation automation tools may also cause a spike in the testing budget though in the long run, it would help to cut IT budget spends on testing provided adequate control on ROI is maintained.

Digital transformation is another challenge in the domain of QA and testing. For some industries like transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing that are catching up with the trend, problems are arising as they are still at the bottom of the digital curve. At the other end of the spectrum are the high-tech companies where a shift towards mobile apps and IoT is observed. While mobile app development has become the key emphasis of many organizations (and naturally mobile app testing too), Internet of Things (IoT) is predicted as the next big thing. Thus, QA and testing professionals need to take part in design and development roles and get familiar with new technology advancements like IoT, which experts predict can augment the risk of failures.

Problems with test environments and testing

Setting up test environments is often a difficult task, especially when fast and continuous testing needs to be performed. At the same time, such set-ups also claim a big chunk of the organizations’ annual software testing budget(s). So, there’s a growing trend of adopting virtualization and cloud based technologies that help in reducing test infrastructure costs significantly.

The World Quality Report 2015 found along with functional validation, a lot of emphasis was also given by several organizations on verifying other sets of requirements. For applications that migrated to the cloud, security and performance were found to be the most important focus areas for testing. The report also found that mobile testing was fast becoming an advancing trend.

Apart from growing challenges with test environments, dealing with more test iteration cycles due to a shift to DevOps and agile, longer test cycles due to more defects being found as well as faster and increased amount of development and releases are some other challenges that QA and testing teams have to cope with.

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Better utilization of human resources

Since 2014, spending on human resources has dropped. Though this could sound surprising as newer skill-sets are required to test emerging technologies (like IoT), steps like increased automation, using flexible service contracts and benefiting from offshore resources made the cost control possible. With spending on hardware and test infrastructure claiming the biggest chunk of IT budget spends, leveraging human resources the best way has become crucial for cost control and a challenge for QA and testing teams.

Budgeting for testing tools

Spending on tools was found to be stable at 29%, down by just 1% from 2015. Though adoption of digital tools caused a spike in tools budget during 2014, the subsequent market maturity that facilitated greater adoption of open source test tools helped bring down the cost. The present trend is to opt for SaaS (Software as a Service), where testing tools can be accessed and used on demand at relatively lower costs as compared to steep perpetual licenses. However, tools that give you the flexibility to buy development or run-time licenses are also finding favor with QA and testers. Even scouting the market to find niche vendors offering cost-effective alternative solutions can help control the budget. As open source tools are becoming more complete and better, they are fast becoming an integral part of testing team’s toolbox that offers good value for money.

But despite the stable budget spend on testing tools, the lack of expertise to decide which tools to use and how to run them properly are challenges that need to be addressed fast.

Budget allocation to IoT

The budget allocated to IoT was found to be fairly even, from Western Europe at the bottom end (12% of its IT budget) to Central Europe at the apex (14% ). Interestingly, the budget distribution between different types of applications and across industries (from Financial Services and Automotive to The Public and Government Sector and Energy and Utilities) is found to allocate an average of 13% of the total spend to IoT. This shows the growing adoption of IoT with mobile and cloud solutions (which had 15 and 16% of the IT budget respectively). Thus, it can be said that the impact of IoT is felt across the domain of QA and testing, including its budget spend.

Final words

As organizations around the world are racing to stay ahead of the competition and trying to deliver quality products fast, QA and testing have become an integral part of the development process to ensure customer satisfaction. Yet, you need a seasoned partner to meet your QA and testing needs without overshooting your budget. To know how the testing solutions of TechArcis can help speed up your digital transformation and make your agile, DevOps and CI programs succeed, contact us today!

Why is Testing and Quality Important for Flawless End User Experience?

In the digital era, end user experience is more significant for every CTO and CMO as most of the statistical data reveals that applications and websites are simply neglected or discarded if the users are not satisfied with their experience. But the point is what can make the experience interesting?

Knowing what actually end-user experience (UX) is, can help. In the past end-user experience (UX) was considered to be how “sticky” or engrossing app was:

How simple was it to use?
How engrossing was it?
And how relevant it was to what the users expect?

This approach is the same for the digitally transforming age and the smart apps, as they are developed to make a service functionality simpler and convenient for the users. But the advanced technology has modified the meaning of “end user experience.”

At present a single application or website could be:

Pointing to various third-party sites
Can be developed with Java, C and C++, and websites with advanced AJAX framework
Dynamically streaming media content

This makes it clear that difficulty and complexity in the application can impact the worldwide user experience by diminishing the response time substantially.

However, in the mobile world, people prefer mobile apps and any hindrances in using the applications can just make the users drop the option and opt for applications which run without any glitches.

The only solution to avoid the user from abandoning the apps is through testing and quality assurance. If you get the apps tested during the development phase, it can make the quality better and deployment faster avoiding the chances to spoil the “end user experience”. But this will only hold true when you have tested the apps in the proper environment. Tuning all the testing activities is essential to remove all the backend performance issues. A couple of years ago, single page websites and apps could easily load even if the connection was slow because they weren’t interactive, but that was the users’ expectation long back. Today websites, web apps, and mobile apps are much complex and this impacts the performance leading to the user experience.

With the latest Omni channel presence of companies, the user has various touch points at their disposal. So there is a great pressure on an organization to comprehend the user experience across the various channels like web or mobile. For example, a user visits a website for electronic gadgets and finds a good deal to be availed, but the time constraint restricts him from buying it at that time. Though when he revisits the website, the web or mobile application interface is so complicated that he drops the idea of purchasing the product from that website and settles for getting it from another website.

This implies that a complex user interface can make a retailer lose customers to other contenders. Thus it becomes a necessity for the retailers to ascertain that the usability factors of their apps are simpler to avoid business loses.

Some of the major benefits of usability testing in digital transformation are:

Increased conversion rates as a result of better user interface
Improved user satisfaction giving rise to competitive advantage
Enhanced and easy accessibility
Improved trust among the viewers builds loyal relationships
Optimal cost and effort as a result of early customer or user feedback

Conclusion: TechArcis, one of the Global leaders in independent software testing, provides Usability testing as a prime service with the complete focus on end-user experience and satisfaction.

Get in touch with us (contactus@techarcis.com) to understand our services in Usability and other types of testing and how it can help you to hold on to your users and give them a great experience interacting with your brand.

Want to beat the competition? Get your e-commerce programs tested for quality and customer centricity

In today’s e-commerce landscape, customers and businesses alike are more and more empowered by the new digital technologies and channels easily accessible at their fingertips. However, this growing level of connectivity means managing a huge wave of data and information. Thus, businesses are increasingly facing the challenge of adopting omnichannel strategies and solutions to manage that data deluge better, know more about their customer behaviors and meet or even surpass customers’ growing expectations for quality service. Thus, unlike the earlier years when product-eccentricity (to gain competitive advantage via superior product merchandising or design) or channel-eccentricity (focusing on one or more key channels to achieve dominance) were emphasized upon, customer-eccentricity with focus on quality has emerged as a key element in e-commerce programs. From acquiring high-value customers to using relevant communication to build more profitable, long-lasting relationships, customer-eccentricity has become the primary goal of optimizing the value of every customer relationship. But to ensure your eCommerce programs meet the desired quality levels and give the customers a single, fast, secure and seamless experience across different devices, platforms and channels, a range of software quality testing needs to be performed.

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Performance testing is a top priority in e-commerce

Did you know even a delay of just 250 milliseconds of a page load time can drive customer away from your eCommerce platform to that of your competitors’? How many times have we heard eCommerce programs performing poorly or crashing under a sudden surge of holiday shoppers or during promotional events or when a sudden spike happens in their traffic? Since you can never predict with surety how many people would use your program at a given point of time, what should you do to ensure your e-commerce programs are ready to handle an abrupt shopping frenzy or a higher than expected number of users? The answer lies in having a performance testing strategy in place for software quality assurance.

The performance of your eCommerce platform depends on these factors:

Throughput

Executions per click
Transactions per minute
Request per second

Response time

Period of a task
Seconds per click
DNS Lookup
Page Load
Time lag between a click and the visibility of pages

So, these factors should be checked to ensure optimum performance of your eCommerce platform.

You should also consider these aspects while doing performance testing for your eCommerce applications:

Examine performance across geographical locations: The performance of your eCommerce applications shouldn’t be affected by the geography of your customer base. Since a wide variety of browsers and devices may be used across different locations, testing for the same is also recommended. Before the peak periods like the holiday season or when you are about to unveil a grand sale, the testing team should work with the marketing team to know how the campaigns and promotions will be executed so that they can test ahead and ensure their customers have a good experience.
Focus on UI/UX: The more usable your application/site is, the higher will be your chances of retaining the loyal users. So, you should check for poor site/catalog navigation, non-intuitive design and lack of support apart from using A/B testing to constantly test UI/UX elements to make sure the ones you use are giving you the best conversion rates.
Emphasize on mobile testing: Since 1 in 10 e-commerce dollars come from mobile accounts, software quality testing for ecommerce focuses on making the applications and platforms mobile-friendly. You can use load generation software to simulate peak loads and check if your apps and sites perform as desired and don’t crash under heavy load. Since the mobile domain has a huge variation in terms of platforms, devices and networks, mobile testing needs to address performance issues that such variations can trigger.
Testing for optimal transaction processing speed: Some particular transactions like product searches are likely to be more network intensive than others. So, you need to test such transactions across devices and browsers to ensure optimal processing speed for every transaction. It’s equally important to test each and every user path possible, especially if they are likely to affect critical operations or key functionality.
Cloud-based testing: If you are shying away from repeated, adequate performance testing due to the high costs involved, cloud testing can be your solution> as it can quickly simulate a large number of users without needing additional hardware. With cloud testing, you can even test your eCommerce apps and sites from geographically diverse locations without requiring elaborate setups.

Finding and dealing with performance bottlenecks and checking scalability are other factors that performance testing should address.

Other aspects to be tested

Security: In the speedily evolving world of e-commerce, conventional penetration testing is no longer sufficient. What you need is specialized penetration testing tailor-made to suit your e-commerce functional modules that can spot issues specific to e-commerce design, including third part integration (for products and vendors) and mobile payments. The penetration tests you design should address the most common vulnerabilities in the eCommerce domain namely

Order Management
Payment Gateway Integration,
Reward and Coupon Management, and
CMS (Content Management System) Integration

Once you find the flaws, you should make sure to fix them and have a secure design so that your customers can trust your eCommerce application and platform fully. Ensuring that information transmission is secure, digital signatures are used where needed, and adequate protection is in place against web attacks and computer viruses is equally crucial to have happy, returning customers.

Browser compatibility: It’s important to test if your eCommerce application and programs work on the latest browsers (Google Chrome, IE7 and above, Safari and Firefox) in use or else, you may lose out on a sizable chunk of business.

Page display: This involves testing for run time error messages, page download time that’s too long, erroneous font sizing or page display and dead hyperlinks.

Shopping order processing: From checking shopping cart functionality and order tracking to how fast and correctly order processing is done and how seamless payment processing is, testers in charge of software quality testing have a lot of aspects to focus upon to ensure customer satisfaction.

Back-up and recovery: Testing fault tolerance, back-up failure and recovery problems in case of program malfunction or crashes are crucial so that important data isn’t lost or corrupted.

E-commerce testing challenges

Testing for quality assurance in software and applications for eCommerce often faces some challenges. Since such apps and platforms usually need to be made accessible to various business regions with multi-lingual markets, compliance with accessibility standards to support the same is a tough task. Another challenge is to protect customer data and identity. Checking reliability and scalability of applications as well as extensive testing and test management for programs dealing with large scale e-commerce transformation are other challenges that testers have to deal with.

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Final words

Testing for quality assurance in software for eCommerce applications and systems is crucial for meeting the demands of customers and encouraging them to keep coming back. If you are looking for an outsourced quality assurance partner for your eCommerce needs, you don’t need to look beyond TechArcis. Reach us to get started with testing your customer-eccentric eCommerce solutions today!

Successful DevOps adoption for Quality Assurance – Know it all here

Let’s understand the fact that successful DevOps adoption will need an efficient team of DevOps experts who will always be ready to support you with the most needed expertise in technology and tools. They will deal with and manage all the troubles – like, hitting the wall of scalability, tools integration, issues with production cycles, test data, in-sprint automation and continuous improvement required to help the teams and enterprises scale up to DevOps.

DevOps is multifaceted and gaining traction through a collaboration of teams, availability of mature tools, standardized environments, automation support and constant feedback from all stakeholders i.e. Development, Testing and Operations teams.

Better implementation of new technology along with constant testing and development

Surely, DevOps practices facilitate team collaboration in the best possible way and get the better results promptly with the help of Dev, Test and Ops teams. This allows innovation, transformation and also challenges all the stakeholders to develop quality products. Moreover, it supports agility by equipping businesses to ‘check fast and get over the glitch fast’. DevOps inevitably makes way for faster testing and prompt results for the quick deployments and maintaining the standard of production environments.

To be more specific, it remarkably reduces the debugging environment troubles and allows the team to put complete focus on innovation and reaching the business targets. This, in turn decreases the time-to-market with an automated delivery pipeline. Nevertheless, the agility for end-end testing through the practice of DevOps enhances the deployment process. To top the list of benefits, it also supports constant customer feedback by monitoring the user experiences along with performance tracking.

How can DevOps support the Transformation journey?

As the specialist and industry experts, our focus is to ensure that DevOps is not just limited to being a process for delivering products or apps and software but it should also encompass transformation at more in-depth organizational level. This transformation transition includes all the functionalities which can finally shape up a cultural transformation in the workforce.

Mainly the aspects are the cost of maintenance, technological upgradation, and dealing with organizational change involving people, process, and systems. DevOps approach focuses on better adaptation of tools and practices for constant integration and incessant delivery.

The key aspects that can be best addressed by DevOps

DevOps approach emphasizes on effective adoption of tools and processes for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. Latest apps may require on-demand test environments, all-inclusive automation, test coverage and advanced tools for automation. While DevOps supports agility, it is also results-oriented where each activity is monitored and tracked through dashboards and metrics.

Now if we talk about ROI and benefits, DevOps has loads to offer. It creates product reliability, allows teams to provide unhindered services and allows quality maintenance through continuous testing, which results in making the product as per user expectation for better popularity and adoption.

It’s a collaborative effort that reduces the cost incurred and streamlines the production process

DevOps enables team collaboration and creates a cost-effective structure that assures better quality and fast deployment. It improves communication channels, focuses on feedback, and provides transparency for the teams to come to the proper decision making.

What Successful DevOps adoption includes?

DevOps has undergone a major transformation in the last year and is widely getting accepted and practiced as it offers business value by improving the quality of product and making the complete cycle swifter and flawless. The main aspects are People, Processes, Tools, Automation and Data in the wave of DevOps adoption process.

According to one of the reviews of Gartner, ‘DevOps approach comprises a series of technologies and methods tweaking the software delivery process. I&O leaders must understand the readiness and benefits of DevOps techniques to ascertain their DevOps initiatives speedup the time to market and the deployment, in providing business value.’

It inevitably involves skilled teams for carrying out the development and automation process forward. It initiates from the conceptualization and then it is changed into practice as automation activities for processing and delivery. This is the way how organizations following conventional processes can switch to the modern procedure by becoming friendly to agile and adaptability.

It has been speculated and observed that adoption of the modern processes and skilled resources can augment the productivity by nearly 80 percent. Continuous Integration and Delivery helps to solve most of the issues and enable constant feedback with Continuous Testing.

Data based scalability to ensure the best performance shortening the production cycle

Most significantly, DevOps employs data to better the test cycle at scale and simplifies the application structure to faster the development process. The next important aspect is agility in the project pipeline, which improves the deployment process, forms standardized structure to monitor quality and is one of the key benefits of practicing DevOps. This clarifies that it’s a challenge for enterprises to adopt the modern process and by each unit within this system.

It is the actual reason that DevOps needs to encompass People – Processes – Systems as a complete unit, not in silos. It gathers three main factors – Management, Business requirements and Dev/Test along with Ops needs.

TechArcis team is known in the DevOps industry as experts in this space, we have helped numerous clients with their automation requirements and streamlining their journey of adaptation of DevOps through all the validations by performing continuous testing and much more.