How 2020-2021 pandemic has shaped the test automation landscape?

Automation landscape

The world had come to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, but there was a sudden surge of innovation. Organizations in various sectors realized that to deal with the adversities of this crisis, they must innovate new ways to sustain their business. We adopted various digital platforms to interact and grow with the exchange of services and offerings. But ensuring the quality of these products, services and offerings remained a decisive point. 

We are all aware of the importance of testing. It is known to all that testing plays a vital role in ensuring system quality. Organizations are extremely vocal about the incompleteness of quality assurance without appropriate and adequate testing practices, structure, tools, and plans. Did the testing process come to an abrupt halt due to the outbreak of the Pandemic? No, it did not. In fact, organizations found different channels to facilitate the testing projects. As the old saying goes, “necessity is the mother of inventions”. 2020-2021 pandemic became a driving force to innovate for quality assurance.

Pandemic surely had some negative and positive impacts on digital transformation. But that did not refrain people from trying out new solutions and remedies to their problems. Let us look at some of the positive and negative impacts of digital transformation that organizations had to face during the global pandemic.

Positive impact of Covid-19 in digital transformation

There has been a tremendous change in the way people work, think, and act. They have learnt new techniques and how to put them to use. The digital transformation has made people adapt to the changes. They have learnt to think out of the box and try new technologies. Digital transformation has facilitated remote working, and employees know that they can still be productive and efficient even while working remotely. The new work structure is like, “give us the facilities and new technologies, and we will innovate from there”.

Negative impact of Covid-19 on digital transformation

What seemed like a positive development for some were unfavorable for others. Covid-19 came with certain restrictions on communication and physical interaction. Some of the organizations that followed an old school method could not evolve with the surrounding changes leading to the disintegration of their foundation. Many physical branches were closed down with the decrease in footfall, and their business moved to the virtual platform. It has become a strenuous task for the management team to bring their employees back to the office. Employees have learnt new ways of working it has become hard to drag their feet back to the office.

Testing before Pandemic

Software testing is an integral part of quality assurance, and organizations cannot put them on the back burner. Testing has come to the mainstream and is executed simultaneously with the development lifecycle. Organizations realized the importance of testing long before the outbreak of Covid-19 hence, continuous testing is included in CI/CD pipeline as an inseparable process. With the introduction of effective test automation tools, it has become easy and convenient to conduct and execute testing practices like regression, UI/UX functionality, integration, user acceptance and more at a massive scale. But there are more test requirements, which need expert and skilled testers to execute them. It is one reason that even after innovating the most effective test automation tools, organizations still require manual testing. Hence, we have the best of both worlds and automation test practice is most efficiently supported by manual testing.

Testing before the pandemic was mostly conducted onsite, with a significant portion handled by the offshore team. The organization had the advantages of system architecture and an adequate bandwidth with an efficient technical team deployed onsite that helped them carry out the end-to-end testing process without any disruption. After checking the end-to-end testing process and the product release, it would not have made much difference for the technical team to be on the testing site. However, the maintenance of the software performance and quality assurance was largely done by the offshore team.

Testing during Pandemic

The testing team still maintained the right blend of manual and automation testing. But a few things changed during the pandemic due to certain factors. There were sudden restrictions on travel and human contact. People were working from home and remotely, and international travel came to an abrupt halt. The testing process, however, could not have stopped. Organizations realized that it is only wise to adopt remote or offshore testing as an option. As test automation is more improvised and integrated with high-end technologies, remote and offshore testing would be as productive as onsite testing.

The remote testing model proved to be extremely convenient as the organizations could save a significant operational cost while the testing team handled the technical challenges and adversities. The technical team overcame many challenges like time zone differences, travel restrictions, and time constraints, ensuring 100% success in handling the end-to-end testing project from offshore. The team paid extra effort to deliver the project with utmost competence and assurance that all the testing aspects were considered and that all errors were addressed well without fail. Organizations are more confident that quality project delivery is possible even with challenges amidst the crisis.

Testing after Pandemic

Organizations are more prepared to deal with crisis and keep their business as usual (BAU) functional. It is no longer about choosing a testing project model. They have two models and multiple testing strategies based on their specific project requirements. Automation and manual testing go hand-in-hand and are applicable for many testing projects. The testing of banking or financial applications is exceptionally vital. Hence, it is necessary to have the most updated test automation tool to combine with the right test strategies, planning, and practice.

Organizations would not forsake either offshore or onsite testing models. Instead, both the testing model would act as a support to each other. Applying offshore testing proved to be a winning game for many organizations, as they succeeded in implementing the testing project and reap the benefits of offshore testing. Organizations have saved time and costs by adopting offshore test project models. Onsite testing is advisable when organizations have the in-house digital testing architecture to carry out the testing project. It is critical to have a compatible set-up of in-house architecture for the onsite testing model.

Conclusion –

After years of flourishing by offering onsite and offshore testing models to many organizations, Yethi has successfully delivered and completed 9+ offshore testing projects globally during pandemic 2020-2021. We are a niche QA services provider and have years of experience in delivering onsite & offshore testing projects. Having expertise in offering end-to-end testing services across all the major core banking applications with functional areas like Liabilities, Payments, Assets, Trade finance, Treasury and more, we have worked with 90+ clients across 22+ countries. We have not let our clients suffer from this unprecedented global situation and provided complete support to help banks avoid any business disruption and be prepared for any potential impact.

Our offshore testing model is designed considering all aspects like project knowledge, time constraint, travel restrictions, time zone differences and more. Our onsite and offshore testing models are managed by expert consultants and supervisors and backed by highly skilled resources and maestros in testing and programming to ensure that the testing projects are efficient and cost-effective.

Our highly experienced testing & digital consultants understand the processes and technologies involved in digital projects & quickly scale capacity to meet the needs of your business. Our dedicated offshore and onsite team can continue the workload with proper coordination, creating a continuous testing cycle.

We address the challenges of business continuity through our efficient testing models. Our 5th generation robotic codeless test automation tool Tenjin is built with intuitive features and supports our QA services. It is a fast and scalable test automation platform and works flawlessly across multiple applications to provide accurate test results.

Is Offshore Testing Advisable for Your Business?

Testing advisable for your business

It is a sheer competency to handle the entire testing process from a location that is far away from the actual business site. Offshore testing or remote testing is a testing model where a company or an organization outsources the testing process to a team located in a different country. The doubt that sneaks in mind is offshore testing advisable for businesses? Can the resources, tools, and environment be favorable to carry on offshore testing without any disruption?

The business in the current scenario is reaping high benefits from this testing model, which means there’s something extremely advantageous about this arrangement. Offshore testing is increasing daily due to advancements in innovative technology facilitated by online tools. Offshore testing can be optimized with right software testing suite, skilled and expert testing team working remotely in highly competent and convertible environment.

Let us look at the benefits of Offshore testing team,

  1. Deploying a testing team at the business site will need organizations to make necessary arrangements. It requires organizations to set up an infrastructure suitable for testing projects, arranging a place in the office set up for the testing team, in addition to the obvious ones like travelling and staying arrangements. With the offshore testing model, organizations can take the stress out of the equation as the testing team will execute the end-to-end testing process from a remote location. Hence, Offshore testing is a cost-efficient option for any business.
  2. By outsourcing the testing projects offshore, the management team frees up the resources to focus on other priorities. Resources within the organization may have expertise in other domain areas. By outsourcing the testing projects, the organizations can delegate their team to different domain verticals to build expertise.
  3. The offshore testing model is a leap toward digitalization as the organizations’ core application is tested by other software around the clock.
  4. By outsourcing the testing projects, organizations can save time and focus on other areas of business that require close attention.
  5. Offshore testing expedites the software development process. In an ideal scenario like this, the testing and development process occur simultaneously, allowing the organization to speed up the software development process and leave it with the offshore testing team to do the rest.

How effective an Offshore testing team is?

An organization looks for the potential, experience, and expertise when choosing an offshore testing team. An offshore testing team is also selected based on similar projects they have executed in the past. In an ideal offshore testing model, the team focuses on quality assurance services to determine whether the software meets the predefined requirement. Organizations clearly define the benchmark for the projects, which they share with the offshore team.

The offshore testing team must be competent enough to execute end-to-end testing, including functional and non-functional testing. The testing project is strategically managed by a dedicated Test Centre of Excellence consisting of skilled and proficient test consultants. From test planning and designing to test execution, everything is done at the beginning of project inception to ensure that the offshore testing team achieves success in offering maximum benefits of the testing practices.

The offshore testing team focuses much on integration with the core enterprise applications and tests them at the integration points because it combines the different units, modules, and components of the software as a group to evaluate the specified functional requirements. Offshore testing is an effective process as it aims at achieving the highest benefits for the organization by significantly investing a lesser cost for the testing practice. It allows the testing process to take place in different geographical locations rather than appointing an in-house testing team.

It is important for businesses to transform digitally. It aims at ensuing end user experience with infrastructure, processes, and tools to enable rapid delivery of product value to consumers. The offshore testing occurs at the digital level, which ensures brand consistency across multiple channels and consumer platforms. It focuses on delivering better value quickly and more efficiently. Offshore allows application testing on different device configurations so that newer technologies are being adopted at a much faster pace.

As the development processes are becoming more Agile, testers are adopting the DevOps methodologies to meet the need of shorter and faster development cycles. Offshore testing allows organizations to reduce the turnaround time and improve the speed of release code to production. Offshore testing resources can prove to be efficient and cost effective lowering the expenses approximately by 30%-40% than onsite resources. The process is managed by a team who is expert, skilled, and knowledgeable.

Is Offshore Testing Advisable for Your Business?

In this business world, all organizations do not have enough resources for testing their product, software, etc. In such a case, offshore testing is the best option rather than appointing in-house teams, resources, etc. Sometimes it is challenging for a group of 5-7 testers to manage tests, find out bugs, check duplication and provide code reviews; for all such types of tasks, it is best to do offshore testing by transferring data to other departments located in different countries. An offshore testing team,

  • Provides a pool of expert testers:

A pool of expert testers is the only one who works for the testing project and acquiring test services from an organization with a pool of expert testers is lucky for them. Such testers work on performance testing and provide comprehensive results, which are error-free and give great market hits. An organization should hire an offshore testing company that will provide them with specialist suggestions to make the testing strategy more efficient and effective.

  • Provides quick results:

An organization can get faster results of its testing by acquiring offshore testing services within a fixed period. A specialized company will do testing, and specialized experts in their tasks give quick results with improvements.

  • Is Cost-effective:

In in-house testing, an organization must bear a high cost in appointing expert testers, purchasing software testing tools, paying them salaries, etc. This will be a significant burden on the organizations, especially those who have started their business recently. Offshore testing is the best alternative for them and saves all costs an organization bears in in-house testing.

  • Saves plenty of time:

Offshore testing saves time in two ways. First, the offshore staff uses those instruments and techniques with their experts to make data error-free and work on quality improvement, saving much time. Second, an organization can direct human and production resources to focus on the company’s main activities. So, offshore testing is also the best option for organizations that require quality assurance services.

  • Focus on the development of software products:

In offshore testing, the experts only focus on developing, improving, and focusing on the sales and marketing strategy of a product. When the right people are working on the right domain, the product will be highly beneficial for the marketing concerns and increases sales.

  • Bug free software:

The offshore expert testers are those who guarantee bug-free software. Testing is done by qualified staff who are experts in their work. Along with in-house testing, it is a comprehensive task for the appointed experts because they are not that many experts like the offshore testers.

  • Uninterrupted work cycles:

The offshore work team will consistently work on a particular task uninterruptedly because it is the primary and only task of the offshore experts. In in-house testing, there is the full involvement of the organization managers, workers, directors in their performed tasks, which will result in delayed results and interrupted work cycles.

The benefits of offshore testing are discussed above, which is advisable for businesses also. The decision of offshore testing is in the hands of the company and an organization. A product is more liked by the customers, which qualified experts and all the necessary already test and valuable changes are made at every level of the product. Testing like functional testing, integration testing, performance testing, acceptance testing, UI/UX testing, and Daily Regression Test Run can be done in various modules and multi-device configuration led by the expert test engineers.

Why Yethi for offshore testing?

Yethi’s each offshore project is headed by an expert consultant working seamlessly with your onsite team. We can quickly scale capacity to meet the needs of your business. Additionally, by harnessing Time Zone differences, we can jointly create a continuous testing cycle. As soon as your team concludes their working day, the offshore team can continue the workload in a seamless and coordinated manner. Our highly experienced testing & digital consultants understand the processes and technologies involved in digital projects. They possess best practices skills gained from continual training and development as well as real-world experience working with clients across a variety of domains in the Banking and Financial Services space. In today’s challenging environment, the challenges of business continuity can be addressed through offshore testing of the digital platform.

Yethi’s codeless test automation platform, Tenjin, is a plug-and-play banking aware solution, with distinctive features like robotic capabilities to learn the application and re-learn after any updates, so regardless of the complexity and number of updates, the test execution is fast, minimizing manual effort. Tenjin works flawlessly across multiple applications. It is developed with cutting edge technology yet is business user-friendly and requires minimal tech skills to handle the tool. It works seamlessly both in a traditional waterfall model and agile mode. Yethi’s substantial repository of more 8.5 million test cases to test multiple global banking software platforms with ease. Tenjin delivers automation in test portfolios, agility of in-sprint regression testing and up to 35% reduction in cost & cycle time using risk-based testing methodologies.

Conclusion:

Offshore testing is an attractive option as the testing process is conducted by a highly skilled group of testers. Sometimes, it will be challenging for the organization to choose the best offshore testing company from the list of companies. When pricing is the critical factor of the organization, then offshore testing is often considered an advantage. The focus of offshore testing is to provide quality assurance services. It also works well with quantitative testing because it allows you to get data from a large sample size of test participants. In offshore testing data migration support plays a vital role.