Introduction: Software quality is non-negotiable. Yet, the path to achieving high-quality software is as diverse as the projects and domains it serves. Every project has a set of unique requirements. Therefore, those requirements must be addressed differently via unique testing strategies. The same test strategy applied for one project won't be a suitable one for another project. There should be tailored testing solutions to align with the project requirements, domains, and business goals.
Why Tailored Testing Matters
Every project has its own challenges, development methodologies, target audiences, compliance requirements, and technologies. Likewise, different industries work on different operational procedures. These are some key categories where we have to think about different testing strategies.
1. Domain-specific project needs
The project's domain is the key fact we have to think about when designing the test strategies. Because the testing types we should do, the way of doing the test executions, test data preparation, requirements of their audit preferences, and business priorities are different from domain to domain. For example, if we consider a Banking application, certain functions will be triggered after the end of the day and month end. Interest calculation and tax calculation are some examples.
The way of handling test data varies from domain to domain. For a Banking application, synthetic data will be prepared for testing. For the eCommerce project, test data will be arranged as pairs to do the pairwise testing. What should be the Web API testing plan to test the integrated payment gateways and what should be the Performance testing plan for handling simultaneous user load and transaction volume during the peak time? So, these are some key things that will be considered when designing the test strategies for eCommerce projects.
For the verification of the reconciliation process of a Telecom project, you may request past customer and transaction data to verify the accuracy.
Therefore, our testing strategy should be aligned with those domain-specific features and requirements. There is no way of going without a tailored solution.
2. Agile or Waterfall?
The project's development methodology is the other key thing. The strategy you implemented for the Agile project is not aligned with a waterfall project where you have to do testing for a fully developed application. If we consider shift-left testing with our involvement in the early SDLC phases, it won't be applicable as it's already done at the time we were involved with it. So, in such situations, we had to think about risk-based testing by prioritizing testing based on risk, complexity, and business importance. Competitive evaluation testing we do to suggest improvements won't be done with the mutual agreement with the client if they are not ready for further developments.
If it is agile, then identifying the road map of the project, story values allocation according to the functionalities' complexity, resource allocation, regression testing plan, automation testing plan, test scope for manual testing, close collaboration with the development teams, partner testing, way of involving in the requirement and designing phases, production testing and releasing, bug tracking and way(s) of communicating are the key aspects that need to be considered for testing strategies.
As the sprint lasts for two weeks, if our testing strategies include putting an effort into reviewing the requirements and design before the implementation then many bugs can be avoided as a preventive action. If our testing strategies include getting the status of the Smoke testing from DevOps before starting working on Production testing, then the additional effort the test team has to put into differentiating issues from configuration mismatches can be avoided. These two points have been suggested via our testing strategies and we saw the best results. The last one is really impressive. :D
3. Project duration and time allocation for testing
The duration of the project is another key aspect. If the project is limited to one testing cycle without recurring cycles, then there is no need for automation testing. If it is a long-term project, then what should be an automation framework we should use? If the client does not need parallel testing, then can we go with a tool like Cypress for better speed? If the client needs to go with an in-house developed tool, then how should we adhere to it without previous experience? How to handle that learning curve? We faced a similar experience where that organization had its own automation tool and it was for back-end automation. In that situation, handling the learning curve without community support and by merely depending on the few ones who knew that tool was really challenging.
Then preparing the automation test suite with the areas that need to be considered for the automation, the capability of fully or partially automating the features, test script maintenance, CI/CD integration, etc... should be done with a proper testing strategy.
Time allocation for testing is also a key thing. If it is limited, then it will be a tight schedule where you have to go with a strategy with proper resource planning and prioritization of testing tasks according to the business prioritization and risky areas. It does not mean that you skip the less-priority areas. The testing strategy should be addressed properly by allocating time in the later releases. Test automation will be one of the best ways to address this. But again if you have to maintain the test scripts due to development changes or configurations, then you should have a proper manual testing plan to ensure the coverage.
4. Customized applications
Because of the lack of awareness about system applications, we have seen how organizations face various problems when it comes to operating their transactions via customized products. For example, if there is an ERP product that gives customized products will be suitable for a manufacturing company but not for a real estate company even though after making customizations they need. The thing is usually the one who purchased is not aware of all the associated features of the product and that leads to having unnecessary features for their operations. Sometimes, the workarounds they suggested also may have a negative impact on the features they need.
Therefore, when it comes to testing such an application by matching their business requirements will be a nightmare. For testing such a system, the test engineer should have good domain knowledge to recommend what needs to be omitted, and what needs to be kept and to see the impact of new workarounds.
When going through the applications, we have seen how they have wasted their money on unnecessary features and for the customizations they need. Therefore, in such circumstances, the testing strategies we had to use were totally different from a normal project. In such cases, our testing strategies had to focus on identifying those irrelevant features by recommending disabling/hiding from the application. Because keeping those features allow the users to do fraudulent transactions, face performance issues, generate unnecessary logs, and reports. Doing an impact analysis for the customizations they did and the workarounds they have added are the other key things we had to think about.
Therefore, for such projects, merely ensuring flawlessness and suggesting improvements won't be sufficient, and taking additional steps for the above matters is required to avoid the associated risks.
5. Special project needs
Some projects had special requirements and these are a few things.
- Audit preferences or Adherence with the standard models like CMMI/TMMI
Some organizations adhered to the standard models like CMMI/TMMI to get the certification of the desired level. Therefore, test procedures, processes, and artifacts need to be aligned accordingly. According to the preferences of audit and to present certain evidence to show the adherence with certain standards, there were some requirements. So, our test strategies had to be tailored accordingly.
- Ensuring adherence to new regulatory standards.
This was a requirement of Banking and Finance projects. According to the regulations of the government, when they had to change certain operations, we also had to adhere to those requirements by making necessary changes to the testing tasks.
- High cart abandonment rates.
Even though this is something out of Software Quality Assurance, some ecommerce project owners wanted to get our support for analyzing the user's behavior to understand the drop-off stages where the end-user left the system or canceled the ordering process without continuing with it. Therefore, apart from testing, our testing strategies were focused on doing the user behavior analysis part and giving recommendations for improving the user interfaces and user experience. So, we continued it as a part of UI/UX testing.
Benefits of Tailored Testing Solutions
Improved Time-to-Market and Cost Efficiency: Tailored testing strategies address the exact project needs including business goals and priorities. Then testing tasks will be prioritized accordingly and critical and high-severity bugs will be identified early stages of SDLC that shorten the development lifecycle. Early bug identification reduces fixing time and bug-preventing actions taken in the early phases also contribute to it by cutting costs. Finally, the software will be ready for the market with the most stable and required features by letting the team work on the rest of the features.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: As the tailored testing strategies are focused on exact business needs, every aspects will be considered for testing. Avoiding high cart abonnement rates according to the previous explanation is a good example. Even though it is something out of testing scope, we could work on it by bringing value addition to the final. In the end, these strategies deliver a high-quality product that meets the user expectations and finally, it leads to building the customer's trust, loyalty, and brand image.
Mitigation of Business Risks: Customized testing strategies identify domain-specific risks and provide proactive solutions to mitigate them, ensuring compliance with industry standards and protecting business integrity.
Scalability and Flexibility: Tailored solutions adapt to the unique demands of each project, whether it's a small-scale application or an enterprise-grade system, ensuring consistent quality across varying scopes and complexities.
Competitive Advantage: Superior software quality achieved through tailored testing enhances a company's reputation and competitive position in the market, fostering customer retention and attracting new clients.
Conclusion: Tailored software testing solutions are essential for addressing the unique needs of different projects and domains. By aligning testing efforts with specific challenges and goals, organizations can achieve superior software quality, enhanced user satisfaction, and a competitive edge in their industry.
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