'Software testing plays a remedial role in the SDLC'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Software testing is one of the emerging industries in India and very few Indian companies are now focusing to offer this services in different domains through on-shore and off-shore services. In the Indian scenario, Sonata Software is one among them, who are actively focused on software testing.

In an interaction with CIOL, C.V Narayanan, head - managed testing and web technologies, Sonata Software Ltd, said in today’s scenario, software testing is emerging as a high priority in the CIO’s agenda and enterprises are now moving from input-based pricing model to output-based and business outcome-based business models. 

He also shared his opinion on the role of software testing in software development life cycle and the future of software testing. Excerpts:

CIOL: What are the key elements of Sonata’s High Impact Testing Solutions?

C.V Narayanan: Sonata has established itself as a prominent player in software testing services that help organizations achieve predictable and improved software quality levels to meet their business goals.

The key elements of Sonata’s High Impact Testing Solutions include:

* Consulting approach aligned with industry standard maturity models and a clear visibility to ROI
* Predictable test outcomes based on SLAs (Service Level Agreement)
* IP-enabled solutions to reduce the testing cycle time and improve efficiency
* Optimized delivery models to minimize the overall cost of quality
* Independent validation services for enterprises based on proven methodologies covering functional and non functional testing
* Completely managed testing services which include tools, infrastructure and testing services

Sonata leverages its repository of best practices, techniques like risk-based testing and SonnetTEST — its Regression Test Automation framework — to reduce the effort in a testing life cycle such as Automation testing, Security testing, SOA testing and Performance testing.

CIOL: How Sonata software testing solutions help companies to scale up resources, train and deploy them on projects?

C.V.N: We have got our ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) aligned professionals, who ensure that the associates have necessary expertise to be part of the testing engagements. We also assess the project team members by educating and providing training.

We also emphasize on the availability of reusable assets to address our customers by offering specific domains experts, automation, security testing and SOA testing.

All these testing services can be completed in a time span of two weeks, which is indeed less than the time taken to negotiate an agreement.

{#PageBreak#}

CIOL:  According to you, what kind of role software testing plays in software development life cycle?

C.V.N: Software testing typically plays a remedial role in the overall software development life cycle by identifying functional and non-functional defects. Typically the testing process is associated with the life cycle chosen such as waterfall or iterative model or ‘v‘ model. The primary role of software testing is to determine whether a software application is producing the expected results.

Testers are supposed to represent the business users’ expectations. This means when the software moves to production, there are no outages. Because of the complexity and line of control, often the ideal behavior is broken and results in application outages and loss of business.

To address the reactive approach, some of the modern methodologies such as Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) can be useful. Instead of carrying out the test process post the development, ATDD defines a set of test assets, which can be considered the minimum qualifying criteria for passing the software to the next stage.

CIOL: How do you see the IT industry giving importance to software testing for the product innovation?

C.V.N: Through our customer engagements, we have observed that the control is now more with the business users rather than the IT department. There is a slow but steady shift from compliance to screens, data structures and functions to business process fidelity. This will demand the testing community to be not only well versed with the mechanics of testing but also with business process fidelity.

Some of our customers give more importance to business processes such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, hire-to-retire fidelity rather than on how each screen functions. The mechanics of testing will be a given and understanding of the customer business will become very critical. Also testing is moving from the IT realm to the CIO level.

We see a distinct shift in the role of testers to represent business expectations as we move towards mature, business-driven IT projects. As these are tectonic shifts in the IT landscape, the test organizations will have to adapt to the changing scenario.

{#PageBreak#}

CIOL: What are the roadblocks did you experience in the implementation of the software testing in any enterprises?

C.V.N: Enterprises still have reservations about spending on testing. Individuals who were initially developers generally manage the IT infrastructure in an enterprise. With the business demanding an outcome for the investment made, the IT teams start getting challenged. Test teams do not dovetail the testing processes along with the software development leading to additional pain points in the interactions between the teams. 

According to me, test teams need to be more business savvy especially in creating business case for tools investment and best practices deployment. Businesses continue to look at IT more as a productivity enabler than a business outcome enabler. Once the transformation happens, there will be more focused expectations from testing.

They also need to provide multi-functional behavior, along with the mechanics of testing the team's need to exhibit a great knowledge of the customer business or efficiency improvements in testing through the non-functional testing aspects.

CIOL: Going forward, where do you see software testing as against software development?

C.V.N: Going forward IT projects will be business driven with a clearer ROI. This will ensure that testing is more outcome-led and SLA-driven.
* Testing will in future drive the development process instead of being a process holder to check defects.
* Acceptance Test Driven Development methodologies will dominate projects.
* Increasingly, efficiencies will be brought into testing. Frameworks for functional and non-functional testing will play a critical role.
* Integrated tools will help to ensure that the risk-based testing advantages are ploughed in to the reductions in cost of quality.
* Production systems will be much more advanced, which will inform about situations leading to failure and hence replication of defects will be easier. 
* Knowledge in the domain will be very important in addition to the mechanics of testing. Testing can merge with the ITIL as a support process.
* Independent vendors will play a critical role in testing where multi vendors will provision development services.
* Adoption of opensource tools to reduce the TCO. With the social networking gaining prominence, crowd sourcing for testing will be adopted by organizations.
* Statutory needs will drive validation services. Increasingly traditional testers will be pressed to posses more than the black box testing and specialize either in the domain of the customer or efficiency improvements in testing brought in by non-functional testing areas.