"Independent testing is both a skill and an art"

HYDERABAD: Claiming to having pioneered the culture of independent testing almost a decade back, Satyam Computer Services equally asserts that this concept is not easy. If due importance to testing is given early during the requirement stage, the output will be far more superior. Satyam quality solutions senior VP and global head Prabhu Sinha, who has been fathering quality solutions since the inception of this wing in Satyam, gives his perception on the area of testing in an interview with Sunitha Natti of CyberMedia News.

What kind of customers does Satyam cater to?

Our market segment right now is in the banking and financial space, consisting of business and mission critical applications besides, health and pharma where life sensitive applications exist. The third space is where deployment is done in multiple locations. Telecom, mobile industry and other areas are also falling into the scope of testing.

What is the USP of Satyam's quality consulting?

It is yet another asset for Satyam that both quality assurance and quality control go hand in hand. We work with the consulting team on the business processes and we also go along with them on the testing space. They are very tightly coupled, and this kind of testing is what we call as sitting over and above the development effort. From a corporate standpoint structural independence is what we possess strongly.

When you have a good consulting practice, you can go to the root cause, detect and ultimately the product is likely to come out with less defects. Tacit knowledge is one other area that we have. We keep disseminating knowledge and that is what we name as horizontal competency. We support cycle-based assignments for employers by mastering the art of testing and following best practices to reach the precision levels.

When we talk about other strengths, we do global delivery from all the centers in India and some from outside.

Why do customers need independent testing?

Customers are now accepting the need to pay extra for testing. When a customer has developed a project, only by getting it formally tested by another company, will he is able to contain the defects at a much early stage of the life cycle. This way maintenance cost or number of defects comes down. If you truly associate any testing commitment with service level agreements, then it makes sense for customers to accept it. Independent testing is both a skill and an art - proper estimation and making sure that we do the right testing that is profitable and competitive.

What are the challenges in the testing domain? How is Satyam overcoming them?

Blending testing tools knowledge and automation are not easy to run. When we are talking of testing tools knowledge, we are talking about cycle-time reduction on testing and by way of automating whenever there are changes, one has to make sure that all-important testing libraries run automatically, as the manually it is impossible. Knowledge of the tool is important besides knowledge on technology and business knowledge.

Testing is a niche competency. Testers also need to have thorough development capabilities besides business knowledge of the customer. What we do is, within a given time we help them with product developing skills and then the technology. We mentor these essentials so that in a given short span of time, they become productive on the engagement.