Comprehensive Guide on Enterprise Testing Strategy
By Manish Saini, Community Contributor - September 29, 2022
According to GitLab’s research, speed is crucial in a world where 26% of organizations release builds hourly and 59% of enterprises deliver new software builds on the daily. This is why an enterprise testing strategy is non-negotiable in the SDLC that is carried out by test solution architects and product management teams.
- While developing an end-to-end enterprise test environment strategy, solution architects synchronize BA, DevOps, and QA goals for the final product.
- QA goals are then translated into initiatives like test design, automation, asset delivery management, etc., which are then allocated to respective teams for steady execution.
In this article, we will comprehensively learn more about enterprise testing strategy and its guaranteed benefits.
Current State of Enterprise Testing
As per the most recent key data on software testing from Digital Group research:
- 78% of firms prefer functional and automated regression testing
- 87% of firms employ agile testing to overcome software testing challenges.
- By 2025, the market for software A/B testing is expected to rise to $1 billion.
To strengthen their market positions, enterprise businesses use development tactics such as product launches, acquisitions, mergers, and technical advancements. Enterprise testing architecture is designed to allow this ongoing evolution and the processes used to upgrade them.
What is an Enterprise Testing Strategy?
A structure for the QA organization’s operations and interactions with project team members is established by the Enterprise Testing Strategy (ETS). The ETS, created in collaboration with Project Management, Business Analysts, and Development, provides an outline for how the company would reduce the cost of quality while incorporating quality into product releases.
How is it beneficial?
- Establishes a cooperative and structured approach to automation standards to ensure the sustainability of automation
- Introduces a joint obligation to uphold best practices.
- Drives the lifecycle’s requirements, design, and construction phases to reduce defects
- Defines performance benchmarks for critical applications
- Manage test data following corporate security guidelines
- Develops solutions for gaps in testing for specialized areas like mobility, big data, automation, performance, etc.
Overall Value Proposition
The ETS lays the groundwork for delivering the highest quality while demonstrating test automation ROI
- Scope Limit Creep
- Extend the test coverage
- Test Case creation speed and requirements traceability Relationship these Test Cases.
- Reduce the defects leakage
- Reduce the defects leakage
- Cuts back on rework
Read More: Essential Metrics for the QA Process
Transitioning to Enterprise Test Automation Strategy
Whether you already are part of an enterprise test environment strategy or looking to venture into it, heres a clear cut 10-step checklist on transitioning into it:
- Specify the goals and objectives
- Establish a template outline that is in line with your objectives.
- Engage key stakeholders to win acceptance and support
- Where gaps exist, draw out recommendations
- Set targets for automation based on calculated ROI
- Conduct evaluations with cross-functional stakeholders
- Introduce to upper management as a program
- Analyze whether the establishment of a steering committee will attract more support
- Shortlist metrics to benchmark the current situation and gauge future improvement
- Establish and adhere to a publishing schedule for metrics, such as a monthly scorecard
Follow-Up Read: 11-Step Product Launch Checklist
Creation of the Enterprise Quality Framework
We must use the enterprise strategy throughout the whole SDLC in order to fully see the ETS at play.
Enterprise Testing Strategy (Requirements Phase) | |
Requirements Elicitation | Attend elicitation sessions |
Create test or business scenarios | |
Make sure that the requirements have the desired result. | |
Requirements Analysis | Ambiguity Reviews to find unclear, missing, and insufficient requirements |
Using a feedback loop with the BA, handle ambiguity | |
Unresolved ambiguities that are listed as required defects | |
Requirements Phase Signoff | QA validates that requirements are traceable to test cases are testable |
QA receives business signoff that the business and test scenarios provide adequate test coverage. |
Enterprise Testing Strategy (Design Phase) | |
Design Sessions | Take part in design sessions |
Add or change business and test scenarios | |
Make sure the design meets the stated specifications and produces the desired result. | |
Design Evaluation | Determine where requirements and design conflict. |
Addressing discrepancies/conflicts between requirements and design through a feedback loop between BAs and development | |
Design Phase Signoff | QA confirms that the design meets the specified standards. |
QA will verify designs to be traceable to requirements and test cases. |
Enterprise Testing Strategy (Development Phase) | |
Test Case Management | Create test cases depending on requirements and business/test scenarios |
Scripting for automation & performance | |
Regression Suite Analysis | Examine the regression test case suite and choose tests to run during the regression test. |
Test Case Review | Internal peer reviews of test cases with Test Leads |
Review of project stakeholders by BAs and Dev Leads | |
Test Case Signoff | QA obtains Signoff from the BAs and the Dev Leads. |
Enterprise Testing Strategy (Testing Phase) | |
Smoke Test | Act as the starting point for the Validation Phase. |
Use as the entry point for each code change | |
System Testing | Test cases for the system are executed |
Test cases for system integration are executed | |
Cycles of defect-fix and retest | |
Regression Testing | Perform regression test cases using automation. |
Test Closure | Test cases final update where it needed |
Choosing test cases for the regression suite | |
Target test cases for the following automation stage |
Measuring an Enterprise Test Automation Strategy
As part of your agile testing metrics, the following flow would help you decode the success of your overall enterprise automation strategy.
Requirements Measurement
Development Measurements
Test Measurements
BrowserStack for Enterprise Testing
When using Agile, BrowserStack for Enterprises is the trusted industry leading infrastructure for high-quality releases. Teams can test regularly and widely owing to the characteristics below:
Extensive Administrative Controls
- Access control: Assign parallel threads to teams based on your testing requirements while also creating sub-teams and customizing dashboard views.
- Single sign-on: Integrate BrowserStack with your current identity providers, such as SAML 2.0, IDP, SP, and others, for authentication.
- Auto-provisioning/de-provisioning: Eliminate BrowserStack activation and deactivation from the employee onboarding and offboarding operations
Total Data & Network Governance
- IP Whitelisting: Securely test while overcoming IP access restrictions. For all incoming and outgoing traffic from its remote devices, whitelist a number of BrowserStack IPs
- Advanced Local Testing: Enforce organization-wide security, logging, and monitoring policies. It makes sure that every user’s traffic from BrowserStack Real Device Cloud is routed through your network.
Test Insights for Agile Transformation
- Test insights: Analyze how well-automated testing is performing overall. Analyze data using various filters, including teams, builds, mistake rates, device and browser coverage, and more.
- Usage statistics: Give teams the ability to organize and improve their test runs based on how they use BrowserStack.
With BrowserStack Test Insights & Analytics, you can fill in the gaps with insights into the types of devices, desktops, and operating systems that you have been testing.
Infinitely Scalable with Growing Test Suite
- Parallelization: Run a large number of tests concurrently on your parallel threads, then place the remaining tests on a queue so you won’t have to worry about them being dropped. Learn more about parallel testing.
- Coverage: Release experiences that are cross-browser and cross-device compatible. Test on more than 3,000 browsers and actual mobile devices across delivery cycles.
- Availability: Built with 99% uptime and low network latency, BrowserStack offers dependable feedback and unbroken testing.
Get BrowserStack Enterprise Automation
Conclusion
The pursuit of quality is ongoing for any enterprise testing strategy. Organizations should be keen to adopt an ETS as soon as feasible if one is not already in place, even though it may appear like a difficult task. The long-term advantages of test automation exceed the drawbacks by a wide margin since IT failures can seriously hurt your company.
With the help of effective and efficient software solutions, an enterprise test automation strategy may greatly increase an organization’s alignment with its corporate objectives and vision. BrowserStack’s 50,000 customers deliver seamless cross-platform experiences to billions of users worldwide using manual and automated approaches, courtesy of an enterprise testing infrastructure.