Importance of test code quality in continuous testing of financial applications

The global pandemic (2020-2021) had led to unanticipated issues such as economic crisis and credit risk. The upcoming years looked uncertain while facing a critical time. To protect from the economic fallout, the leading business entrepreneurs focused on finding out possible solutions that they thought would help them in stabilizing business continuity and serving their customers better.

One of the Gartner’s Business Continuity Survey reveals that as less as 12 per cent of organizations were prepared to combat the effect of a deadly catastrophe like coronavirus. Amidst the threat of spreading COVID-19, the leading financial institutions considered evaluating their business continuity plans and pandemic planning initiatives to ensure they put safety and efficiency first.

Banking and financial institutions considered agile methodology to adapt to the changing global scenario. The unforeseen event urged the BFSI sectors to reflect on their fundamental practices and how prepared were they for the future. The impact of the pandemic was so widespread that banks faced a weak investment return leading to future credit risks and economic uncertainties. Reportedly, the European banks collectively have experienced an estimated credit loss of an average of €700m in Q1 2020. Meanwhile, in the US three popular banks informed that they noticed a significant credit loss of $25b in Q2 2020.

Current Trend and Opportunities

To prevent the pitfall and evolve from this economic crisis, banks seized available opportunities and prepared their next business module. This catastrophe has urged banks to re-evaluate and analyze their core and non-core assets. Under this scenario, 60% of the banks considered the divestment option, a plan to divest in the next 12 months.

The possibility is likely to play a massive role in understanding the type of organizations banks would like to connect with in the future and how conveniently they can transform their existing process. A growing interest in digitalization is driving banks to adopt digital banking products and solutions to cater to customer requirements. They are taking steps to boost their digital transformation plans.

With a growing threat during a pandemic and different phases of the lockdown being imposed everywhere, financial institutions had adopted remote working policies. It provided an opportunity for the business leaders to reconsider working remotely, operating in the long-term, and consider the monetary impact this approach could have.

This situation enabled many banks to understand their resilience and capabilities. They also reconsidered their cost transformation programs to move in tune with the new challenges of this crisis. The future from here on looks promising and inspiring.

From the online purchase of grocery items to electronic goods, banking and financial institutions, companies introduced promotions, special services, and reward points to re-establish their position in the market. The customers’ purchase behavior was requirement-based, as a product was bought and sold based on bare necessity.

Customers were driven more by emotion during the crisis. Hence, for organizations, brand messaging, tone and purpose became extremely important while connecting with their customers at an emotional level. It helped in establishing customer brand loyalty. Customer purchase behavior depends on four principles, as stated below:

  • As customers remain indecisive, empathy and commitment become two ways to win their trust. During the pandemic, consumers reacted positively to inspiring content that highlighted social, financial, and other real-life aspects.
  • Brands should keep informing their customers about the crisis, how to protect themselves and change in the situation. Customers are likely to trust brands that provide reliable and accurate information about the current situation.
  • Engaging and connecting your customers by facilitating and extending social support are assured ways of improving brand loyalty. Social engagement with customer support and responding instantly during this pandemic have helped build brand loyalty.
  • Offering new schemes, promotions, and offers helps your brands to evolve through endorsement. These efforts have an impact on your customers.

Digital Transformation

Digital banking solutions, which have been brewing for a long time, have accelerated during this unprecedented time. This pandemic situation profoundly changed the behavior of retail and corporate banking clients and facilitated the use of digital banking.

A recent survey done by Ernst and Young, reveals that 62% of consumers said they would use less cash in the future, while 59% will opt for contactless payments. The use of digital services and products propelled more expansion when some of the bank branches were closed, and in response, banks accelerated digital and technology transformation programs.

The small and mid-size companies started adopting digital solutions faster than anticipated. There was an increase of new digital accounts by 2.4 times in the first quarter of 2020 as compared to the first quarter of 2019, and a 49% rise in SME digital loan applications in 2020 as compared to 30% in 2019, in one of the Singapore-based banks.

The concurrent situation has led to massive economic uncertainty, and there is a requirement for the bank to endure this sudden disruption. With a low margin, banks opted for digital tools and focused on sustainable digital enablement that helped them save cost and time. Their motto was, “Grow your business with digital innovations to live up to your customer’s expectations”.

When assessing customers’ requirements, it was observed that a combination of UI and UX of a digital platform contributed to customer satisfaction and experience. Since banking and financial institutions were turning their services online, they needed a platform that could improve the appeal and undisrupted performance.

The following instance supports the claim of how banking is relying on digital and online platforms. In April 2020, Lloyds Banking Group decided to provide a tablet to their 2,000 customers over the age of 70. The objective was to provide training and support to help them access online banking. As banks are now adopting the best digital practices and customer-centric solutions, they form a well-connected digital ecosystem and unique value propositions for their clients. The whole objective shifts to serving their customers better through an outstanding and uninterrupted online banking experience.

Banking has been evolving even before the pandemic swept the entire world. Based on customer requirements and expectations, banks are compelled to leverage digital channels, accounts payments or transfers and online wallets. To avoid the risk of spreading the infection, consumers opted for cashless payments during this pandemic situation. Consumers who did not consider online payment and transactions as options were encouraged to migrate to a digital platform. Since many consumers were not fully familiar with the digital platform, banks have taken it upon them to educate their customers for an outstanding experience.

As the cashless transaction became the new reality of the ongoing situation, banking and financial sectors had to speed up their digital innovation process in response to customer needs by leveraging cross-channel, customer-centric metrics and tracking the success of digital banking. To re-align sales, reduce operational costs, and offer excellent customer experience, data and analytics, AI and automation played a significant role.

A Cost-effective Managed Services

A well-panned managed service can offer operational flexibility and ensure uninterrupted business-continuity plans against unanticipated challenges during the global crisis. With the pace at which the market situation changed, the banks and financial institutions could not afford to hold back the digital revolution for long. Organizations realized that if they suspend their online operational transformation, they will suffer business loss. They understood the competitive edge the change would bring and hence started managing the costs more carefully.

A well-managed service allowed the banks to reduce operating expenses for the long term, and the sudden outburst gave a reason to the bank to adopt managed services. Managed services helped banks to formulate a strong business continuity plan. It is during the time of crisis that managed services helped the banks to maintain the system stability.

The financial instability during this challenging time urged banks to develop strategies to encourage their customer to move online and prove their operational flexibility. With this rapid digital growth, banks were compelled to invest in security, virtual collaboration and cloud infrastructure, analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation. The banks and financial institutions were quick to adopt digital transformation. And the one who did could recover from the economic setback and establish a strong foothold.

Since banking operations largely depend on customer behavior and satisfaction, the banks must face and overcome the challenges of maintaining their standard of customer services, while mitigating operational hurdles.

Current Contact Centers

Digital and mobile banking witnessed a sharp rise during this critical situation, along with the voice channel to serve consumers well. Despite the fully functional digital operation, a few of the banks were operating from branches in different locations. It proved that even if we were relying on a digital platform, we still needed human interventions. We realized the importance of both during a crisis like the current one. AI-driven technology replaced this to achieve the objective. AI could smartly detect the call intention and provide real-time data to the users. This technology helped in reducing call time, and improved efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

Rise of Open Banking Solutions

The situation gave rise to open banking solutions as there has been an 832% increase in open banking during the global lockdown. Banks took more interest in the open banking payment initiative to gain more understanding of their financial situation. Consequently, more and more banks used the opportunity and invested in open banking solutions. The European financial institutions witnessed a steady increase, and globally the organizations were eager to have a different perspective. They did not mind sharing the information on an open platform. A recent report revealed that there was a rise of 20-29% of investments in open banking services for two-thirds of the respondents.

Partnering with FinTech

Banks were simultaneously looking to speed up the digital innovations during the prevailing global situation when the economies across the globe were slowing down. Also, during this pandemic situation, many venture capitalists were restricted from investing in FinTechs. Hence, partnering with FinTech in this situation proved to be economically and mutually beneficial.

Many governments slowly eased rules and regulations in FinTech companies to encourage the growth of innovations and balance out economic disruption. It came as a relief against the long-standing rules, which were once imposed on them.

The current situation provided opportunities for FinTechs to strike a balance between digital transformation while creating a secure financial backbone. As banks and FinTechs together collaborated, it helped them to bridge the funding gap.

As banks were in the earlier stages of digital transformation, partnering with FinTech companies proved to be helpful in terms of improving technological expertise. Banks in collaboration with FinTechs could develop platforms for financial inclusion, analyze transactions and other data for deep insights, capability development and deploy automation for compliance.

Mortgage Refinancing & Payment Deferral

The crisis raised lots of dependability on banks as to how they are addressing their customer’s issues. Due to low-interest rates, there was a steady rise in mortgage refinancing in April and May 2020, resulting in high loan volumes for lenders. As the whole world was suffering because of layoffs, and pay cuts, the homeowners found it to be challenging to pay their instalments on time. This catastrophe has left many customers asking for mortgage deferrals.

Many banks waived fees, increased credit card limits, and granted mortgage payment holidays in response to customers’ inability to keep up the monthly mortgage payments. They made a few adjustments with the short-term and long-term financial changes. Banks provided tailored solutions based on the customer’s requirements by leveraging machine learning, AI and analytics and driving improved engagement.

Managing System Performance and Unexpected Risks through QA

The customers looked for additional support during this crisis in terms of credit facilities from the banks globally. Banks had to be prepared for the upcoming risks and take measures to keep their business and customers protected from the financial debacle, as default and bad loan cases were expected to rise in numbers.

Banks had to build a powerful fraud and risk management and strengthen their portfolio using their analytical capabilities. It helped them to generate useful insights, improve the operational process, and decide quickly on process-related matters. The impact of the global setback urged the banks to focus, assess and review their stress testing models. Since banks actively took steps towards digital transformation, they had to ensure that their systems had seamless performance, system integration and customer acceptance of their digital platform.

Efficient software and algorithm were needed to detect fraud and reevaluate the risk modelling. It allowed banks to calculate pricing, and evaluate and measure the credit risk of borrowers. Banks needed real-time data and an advanced risk calculator, as the economic impact during this time turned a large amount of data unreliable. Banks had to develop advanced analytical capabilities to filter data accurately and spot anomalies quickly.

Since the outbreak of the global pandemic, there has been a significant rise in criminal activities, increasing the threat of money laundering. Banks will also have to strengthen their KYC and Anti-money Laundering (AML) programs. It helped the banks and financial sectors to manage risks and keep pace with changing regulatory scenarios.  

Journey Ahead from Here

The rising concern and uncertainty of this pandemic situation have made the global banks sort out multiple ways to address their customer requirements. The customers require extensive support and flexible services, and interaction. As the situation demanded high technical upliftment, banks were likely to adopt the followings that allowed and helped them to meet their customer expectations. 

  • Accelerated digitalization efforts
  • Cloud migration
  • Intelligent workflow management
  • Partnerships with the BFS sector and FinTechs
  • Embedding security and governance across operations
  • Advanced risk modelling

The current condition posed multiple challenges and compelled banks and financial institutions to invest more in the digital future. They are now improving their operations by leveraging innovative technologies and continuing to inspire other industries that have not reached digital excellence. The financial sector is on the right track to reap the benefits and enjoy the success of its cost transformation programs for the future.

Ensure Credit Quality in Digital Lending Applications

The digital lending market is exploding with growing apps and fintechs. As per a report IIFL FinTech, the digital lending market is expected to grow to a whopping USD 515 billion by 2030. Lending services are no longer about hard-copy documentation. The lending process has moved far beyond becoming completely digital. From recording queries and customer financial details to credit underwriting and loan disbursal, the process is increasingly becoming online.

The online lending process saves time and effort for customers from physically visiting the bank branches to either sign the documents or verify their identity. Digital lending platforms have reduced foot traffic in branch offices, increasing the dependencies on digital applications, which leads to frequent updates and changes in digital applications. These regular updates require continuous monitoring to create a secure, scalable, and efficient digital lending application.

Why gradually industry shifted towards digital lending from traditional processes?

The traditional lending process was inefficient, filled with errors, and time-consuming. It involved managing hard copies of required documentation, frequent bank visits, and prolonged verification of borrowers’ loan profile, credibility and repayment history. The issues were further amplified if the borrower did not meet the eligibility criteria and underwriting based on their past credit history. Securing loans from the banks remained a matter of speculation for the borrowers. This is where digital lending came into the picture and steadily captured the market.

The current scenario of digital lending

Factors like unlimited access to the internet at an affordable price, smartphones penetrating the market, and applications and software available for loan applications facilitate digital lending. Digital lending in India is expected to touch $350 billion by the end of 2023.  

A report states 36 RBI Approved Loan Apps. These names are independent of banks that already offer lending services at a reasonable interest rate. The lending app comes with instant approval and disbursal within 24 hours, which is extremely convenient for borrowers seeking small and medium-sized loan amounts in case of emergency.

But how the lengthy traditional lending processes become so convenient?

The bank lending apps can access the customer data stored in their in-house server and system. However, the fintech organizations procure this information from various sources like banks and third parties through the Application Programming Interface or APIs.

The fintech applications have to obtain the data from diverse sources. To maintain the turn-around-time and live up to their service reputation, they must send the request data access from multiple sources like credit bureaus for borrower past credit history, link to the bank server for bank account verification and auto debit facility, and more to access borrowers’ details.

The lending process through these applications can be extremely critical if the essential quality checks are not done. There can be rising security concerns, performance & functionality errors, delayed access to customer credit history and a cluttered user interface. Let’s look at the complications or bottlenecks in digital lending applications and what problem it may lead to if remains unresolved.

  1. Security and privacy – Customer data is the most sensitive. Digital lending applications procure customer data directly from the bank server and from a third-party vendor. These transactions can be highly sensitive, and if attacked by malicious malware, they can lead to terrible issues if unresolved. It is crucial to ensure robust security measures and compliance with data privacy regulations.

  2. Data protection from risk and fraud – Understanding the current trend of digital lending platforms protecting customer data from risk and fraud is essential but challenging too. Protecting the sensitive credit details of customers are a complex process if the fintechs do not have adequate mechanism to analyze user behaviour and identify the potential risk.

  3. Scalability – As the number of users and loan applications grows, the application needs to scale efficiently to handle increased traffic and processing demands. Inadequate scalability can lead to slow response times and system crashes during peak usage times.

  4. Migration from Legacy systems – As per a report, over two-thirds of organizations are still using and relying on legacy systems. Legacy systems are non-adaptable and inflexible. They are not compatible with digital lending platforms. Integrating the digital lending platform with the legacy platform can be challenging and may require extensive effort and expert resources. And yet enterprises cannot abandon the legacy platform as they have been running for more than 30 years with an estimated over £2 trillion transactions every day.

  5. Integration with the main banking server – This brings us to the next bottleneck. It is a significant effort to integrate the digital lending platform with banks’ legacy platform. Moreover, the legacy systems are not equipped to manage the integration with the digital platform. They also cannot offer innovative offerings like banking-as-a-service (BaaS) as it does not support application programming interfaces (API) integration with third-party services. However, since the upgradation of these legacy systems is time-consuming, banks resist the changes leading it as a bottleneck in the digital transformation process.

  6. Regulatory compliance – Digital lending applications must be compliant with financial regulations. Frequent regulatory changes also demand financial institutions keep up with the changes and update their applications. With frequent changes in features and functionalities, keeping up with regulatory compliance can be complex.

  7. Data transactions – The digital lending platform pulls large amounts of user data from the main banking systems. It requires robust infrastructure and seamless data integration & management systems to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure smooth operations.

  8. Customer satisfaction – Customers require a fast loan approval and disbursement cycle. Hence, to ensure optimum customer satisfaction, lending institutions validate application workflow that expedites the decision-making process, minimizes delay and conforms to user experience. Also, recurring functionality, performance, and security errors can cause potential application issues that damage the brand’s reputation.

  9. Verification of data quality – Digital lending does not pull irrelevant data. They pull only required customer information. Banking systems may store multiple data but not all data are accurate and useful for digital lending platforms. Choosing the relevant data helps fintechs arrive at an informed essential lending decision. However, verifying the data quality can be complex due to the unavailability of relevant and accurate data.  

  10. Mobile responsiveness – The current trend in digital applications demands high mobile responsiveness. The process can be extremely complex in the absence of a mobile responsiveness platform. Hence, the digital lending platform requires extensive validation to ensure that the platform continues to deliver high-quality services and offer optimized user experience.

Digital lending apps became prominent during the pandemic, and customers are embracing it, because of fast approval and disbursal. But the credit quality remains under the scanner.

How reliable is the credit quality in digital lending applications?

A long-standing business lending process is more effective with manual review, cross-verification, and years of root-cause analysis of defaults and assessments compared to digital platforms. The former could be time-consuming, but it helps to achieve the desired risk outcome. It also helps the banks achieve low default rates.

However, the industry cannot avoid the trend of digital adoption. To adapt to the model, financial institutions have found a middle ground to amalgamate the digital model with the accuracy of data-driven model-based decision-making. As digital lending continues to improve, risk managers can take a calculated approach towards automation.

How can we improve the credit quality of digital lending apps?

Banks are testing the automated digital engine based on data-driven assessments and a structured credit framework to assess credit quality based on predictive default risk. As a result, the decision will be more consistent, accurate, fast and cost-effective.

Is quality assurance and testing essential to ensure the credit quality of digital lending apps? Can quality assurance and testing ensure the credit quality of digital lending apps?

Digital lending apps or fintechs pull data from the banks’ main servers. They also coordinate with TSPs like credit bureaus, collections and more. They handle critical transactions 24/7*365 days and customer details, making QA strategy an essential step. QA and testing confirm that the application and platforms are free from defects and errors before production and market launch. It also must offer outstanding client experience with high-quality mobile apps. Quality assurance and testing helps lenders to improve the credit quality of digital lending application.

Some factors are important here to ensure the credit quality of digital lending applications. API functionality and performance, digital application features and timely response of digital apps.

Though digital lending applications require end-to-end test coverage, including functional testing, reliability testing, validation testing, load testing, UI Testing, Security Testing, Penetration Testing and more, there is one more crucial aspect when it comes to validating digital lending applications.

Our understanding from the projects we have handled is that these applications have a few restrictions and limitations. We have also observed a reliability on API functionality and performance if digital lending platforms have to function without any technical glitches.

As high as the dependency on API, the risk with digital lending keeps increasing. API testing is conducted on Encrypted and Unencrypted APIs, multiple encryption levels and data formats, API tunnelling, instability/availability, handling many security protocols, and more.

We offer manual and automated API testing, validating requests and responses at various API layers. We also validate the accessibility of the API level and check the functionality, reliability, performance, and security of the programming interfaces.

Our intuitive robotic test automation solution, Tenjin, is a functional test automation solution. It is a seamless & effective test automation tool for BA and functional testers. Tenjin Test Automation solution is REST and SOAP API ready. Its features like auto-learn, auto-discover and auto-execute help to learn application interface automatically

We support financial institutions with end-to-end testing of their digital lending platforms.

Both banks and fintechs have brought their lending processes to digital platforms for quick approval and disbursal. It allows the borrower to avail loans in case of an emergency. But like all other platforms, digital lending apps require thorough testing to ensure higher customer satisfaction with lower TAT and improved credit quality. This is where Yethi’s domain expertise and industry come into the picture. We have delivered over 500+ projects for over 130 clients across 30+ countries in various LOBs in banks and financial institutions.

10 Critical Steps in Testing the Business and System Upgrade Projects of Banks

Banking businesses thrive on market relevance and ever-evolving customer preferences. It matters a lot for banks to ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction. They can never compromise business quality as it may harm their reputation, incur a monetary loss, and take away their customer reliability. Compromising the quality of their services and systems may lead them to pay a significant penalty. Hence, testing is crucial in the event of new system installation or upgrades in banks.

Banks ensure to reform their services based on current trends and technologies as customer demands and preferences keep evolving. To stay relevant to their customers and stay ahead of their competitors, banks incorporate the latest technologies and improve their services, eventually improving the business metrics.  Hence, banks must validate every business and system upgrade to retain customers and offer them a seamless experience.

Testing is an integral part of the banking systems which demands a more strategic approach than a random one. It involves a great amount of strategy and planning to ensure that the projects go live successfully without any glitches. As so it may look simple on the surface, testing the business and system upgrades are usually a critical process. There are many steps that an enterprise must consider during the testing of the upgrade projects. Here we have discussed 10 critical steps in testing that the enterprise business must not overlook if their end goal is to serve their customers well and succeed.

Steps in testing the banking business and system upgrades:

Before we consider the step for the execution of successful testing of the business and system, it is important to define the goals and objectives of the testing projects. Here are key considerations to make while determining testing projects of banks once you have determined the objectives of your testing project. 

    1. Requirement gathering based on the project scope.

The testing projects of the business and system upgrade begin with an understanding of the project requirements. The scope of testing, the banking modules, menus, submenus and more are the essential components of any project.

Understanding the project requirements is a complex task as banking applications are quite diverse with multiple features and functionalities. The QA team must have a thorough understanding & awareness of banking modules, functionalities, various layers of application integration and more. The process can be complicated and the project scope may remain unidentified if the teams don’t gather adequate project requirements.

Is it an elaborate exercise to gather project requisites?

Requirement gathering is the entry phase of the software testing project. As a part of the project strategy, it is essential to gather the project requirements and understand the scope of the projects.

By gathering project requirements and understanding the project scope, it is easy to strategize, define, and measure the testing project outcome. It also helps in deploying manpower and determining the time and cost of the project. The team understands what is to be tested; they also understand if they are missing out on any important components, or any potential risk involved so that they can discuss with the stakeholders to have a detailed knowledge of requirements. The team also creates the requirement traceability matrix (RTM) to map the test cases.

    • Requirement validation based on available resources (Time, money, and manpower)

Validating requirements helps the team streamline the testing projects and segregate them into categories to individually address the issues in each category and allow to resolve them immediately. Based on the project categories the requirements can vary. After gathering the project requirements, the team takes an overview of the available resources and validates if the available resources match the project requirements and identify the test environment.

Banking applications are usually complicated with multiple requirements. Also, based on new trends and customer requirements, the application features may change frequently. This dynamic nature of the requirements can further add complexity to the validation process, as they are subject to frequent changes based on the changing application features. Additionally, resource availability in terms of time, funds, and manpower may experience small variations, influenced by the specific project requirements and scope.

Can project requirements change frequently? Does frequent changing project requirements affect the testing project outcome?

Frequent changes in project requirements may not affect the project if requirement gathering is done considering all aspects. The diversions are evaluated by the project team to ensure they can accommodate frequent changes without affecting the project or workflow. Changes in applications are part of the project plan, so a pre-defined strategy and a thorough requirement validation can help the team to prepare with the time, money, and manpower for a successful test execution of business and system upgrades. The frequent changes will significantly not impact the project outcome if the requirements are gathered, assessed, and validated adequately before initiating the project.

    • Planning tests under the scope of the AUT

Planning the test is a critical step for the effective execution of the software testing life cycle. Testers define the test plan, application under test, scope of testing and more to yield expected results. Based on requirement gathering and validation, the team also effectively calculates the effort, time and cost required for testing. The project team also develops the test strategies, methods, and techniques during this stage. They also identify the test cases, test deliverables and milestones. The planning stage will only be successful when a detailed plan is presented, reviewed, and approved.

The test planning stage can be complicated because this is the stage when all the essential components are defined. If one or more project components are not added, then there will be a lack of clear understanding of the project, testing objectives, and scopes, leading to issues in deliverables. Since the executable test cases are identified in this phase, if the roles and responsibilities are not assigned, and test plans are not reviewed and approved, it will be tough for the project team to move on to the next step.  

Can the project team accommodate application changes if the request is raised at the later testing phases? Will it harm the project plan?  

Application changes are normal and can be raised at any stage. The changes are purely based on regulatory and technology updates as well as customer demands. Hence, the updates may come frequently, which the team must accommodate accordingly. Since the application changes are flexible there are greater need to incorporate these changes. Feature and functionality changes are integral parts of project plans.

    • Selecting the test cases for the sanity check

This is an interesting phase in the testing project where you identify the new functionalities, feature changes, and any bug fixes. Since the objective is to perform a quick and fast sanity check, there is no requirement to write new tests. This step ensures that the newly implemented changes are working without any errors.

The process can be complicated as only a small portion of test cases are selected for sanity checks. The team will fail to determine the impact ratio if the right test cases are not selected. The project team must thoroughly understand the project requirements and select only those test cases that might have the highest impact on the application’s functionality and performance.  

What is essential to identify the test cases for sanity checks?

Based on the project, application under test, project scope and test environment, the project team can identify the test cases based on their test predictability. The project team usually handles multiple test scenarios to understand the test cases that can have the maximum impact on application features, functionality and performance and choose the most probable test cases. Usually, the requirement gathering and analysis, understanding of AUT, project scope and the test environment are the essential aspects to identify the test cases for sanity checks.

    • Designing and developing the actual test cases

This is the actual phase when the testing team starts designing and developing the test cases. The team prepares the required test data for testing, and the quality assurance team reviews it. The team identifies the test cases that must be designed and developed and writes them to ensure that the written test cases are easy to understand. They also create test data and scenarios for test cases, identify probable results, and review and validate test cases. They update the requirement traceability matrix (RTM) with new changes.

The main objective for the team in this phase is to have a set of accurate and relevant test cases to ensure that they provide complete test coverage of the software and application. It helps the team to have a 360-degree overview of software quality. A comprehensive testing process allows the team to detect potential errors in the software before it is released. The team prepares the test data and keeps it ready for test execution. In the test case development phase, the testing team creates, verifies, and reworks test cases and manual and automated test scripts.

Banks may face two types of complications at this stage. First, if the team lacks the skill and knowledge to identify accurate and relevant test cases, and second, if due to multiple changes, the number of rework test cases increases. It may consume an ample amount of time and money to find skilled people for the job and validate the increasing number of test cases due to frequent changes in applications.

Can there be a possible solution to reduce the effort and time of rework?

It is time-consuming to find skilled developers and testers when your projects are time-bound. Even if you manage to put the entire team together, you might have to meet with one more challenge of accommodating frequent reworks. The project team might have very less time to meet the project deadline and time-to-market. So, banks hire third-party vendors to handle the testing projects to ensure they go live confidently without worrying about software quality. Since the amount of rework increases with application changes, it occupies a significant segment of the software testing lifecycle compared to new changes. Hence, the team selects a robust test automation solution to reduce the rework or regression test time.

    • Understanding the available test environment

Some banks and financial institutions have a conducive test environment with the necessary hardware, software, and network configuration for test execution. While the team designs and develops test cases, they can simultaneously evaluate the existing test environment. If the test environment does not support the massive business and system transformation and upgrade projects. The team must consider setting up the test environment for an effortless test execution project.

The process is complicated if the bank runs long on its legacy system and has a massive amount of data to migrate. Banks find it tough and time-consuming for seamless execution of the testing process without a favourable test environment. Moreover, they must delegate skilled people for the projects or hire a new team.

What is the possible solution if you do not have the required team strength, bandwidth, and allocated budget to set up a test environment?

Banks can consider hiring a third-party vendor to take care of all their test requirements and deliver the project on time by meeting all the quality standards and regulatory compliance. The QA solution providers have the required test environment or can set up one to ensure timely project completion.

    • Setting up the right test environment for seamless test execution

The test environment defines the condition on which the software is validated. Setting up a test environment can be simultaneously conducted with designing and developing test cases. In this stage, the project team determines the software and hardware conditions for testing the product. As the activity is done by the development team, the testing team may or may not be involved in the process. However, they check the readiness of the available environment, and this is known as smoke testing.

The first step in setting up the right environment is to understand the required architecture. The team must be skilled and aware of the available architecture. The test environment needs to be adaptable for seamless test execution. The process can be complicated if the environment is not favourable for test execution and is not ready with the test data set up.

How can the team ensure that the environment is built-ready for seamless test execution?

The team must validate the readiness of the test environment to ensure seamless test execution through smoke testing. They must understand the hardware, software, and network configuration well to ensure that the environment supports the test execution without any disruption.

    • Executing the test cases

In this phase, the test cases and test scripts that were created in the design and development phase are executed to detect defects or issues or errors in banking software. The evaluated results are gathered and assessed by the team. Test execution combines the two phases, planning and developing that verify the software quality. The activity also helps report bugs or technical glitches in the software. If the testers report bugs, the errors are reported to the developers who fix the bugs, and the testers test the software again.

The process can be complicated if there is no adequate test, or if there were any issues in the planning and development of the test cases. Also, if the test environment is not favourable or the test execution did not happen as per the test plan. The team must also put the stages together to finally execute the test cases.

Can multiple test execution degrade the software quality?

The objective of software testing is to validate the accuracy, stability, reliability, usability, efficiency, flexibility, portability and more. Software is tested to ensure that it successfully passes all the criteria. Multiple test execution does not degrade the software quality, instead, it delays the product release. It may not be necessary to test the same feature again and again. Moreover, testing the same feature repeatedly can be time-consuming. It is a good practice to test only applicable changes, performance, and security instead of testing the complete software functionality and menus. It saves time and effort and does not disturb the existing feature of the software.

    • Tracking and reporting defects

Tracking and reporting defects is one of the objectives of testing the software and its quality. The defects or issues are logged in defect tracking systems that are raised during the test execution. The details of the defects include descriptions, defect severity, priority, and more. The test execution results are examined to verify the software functionality and performance and simultaneously detect defects if any.

If the team identifies defects, it is sent to the developers for resolving the errors and retested again to ensure that the defects are fixed. After the defects are fixed team documents and report the test results to the stakeholders. The end objective is to identify and resolve the defects to ensure that the software can be released without any errors. Hence the software must be tested multiple times to ensure all defects are resolved. The process can be complicated if the team does not have an adequate mechanism to identify defects. Finding defects manually is a complicated process.

What solutions can organizations opt for to reduce the rework and multiple retests?

Multiple defect-tracking tools in the market can reduce the manual effort of identifying defects in the software and reduce the rework. For its benefits, organizations use defect-tracking tools that can be easily integrated with testing or test automation solutions. This saves time and effort and reduces rework. The team can confidently fast-track product releases.

    • Planning exit test followed by test closure

This is the final stage of the test execution and a critical one. In this final stage, the quality evaluation of the software is completed and determined if the product is ready for release. In this phase, all testing-related activities and formalities are concluded and documented. The testing team by now must have a clear understanding of the software quality and reliability. Whatever issues have been detected this far must be resolved. The team must document the testing process and improve the testing processes based on their experiences. It helps in removing the bottleneck from future testing projects.

The stage comprises preparing test summary reports, defect tracking and reporting, cleaning up the test environment, preparing test closure reports, transferring knowledge, and providing feedback for process improvement. The main objective of test closure is to validate the software quality and ensure the product market launch. It also confirms that the test execution was organized and completed efficiently. The process will be complicated if there is a lack of relevant information, or the team fails to capture feedback and critical lesson learnt from the project.

How to ensure that the report is whole and comprehensive?

Recording the project reports manually will be liable to errors as there can be a chance of missing out on information. There are a few test automation solutions in the market that comes with easy reporting solution. As reporting is a tedious, elaborate, and time-consuming exercise, these solutions are convenient and useful for the project team.

Conclusion

The steps, scenarios, and situations mentioned above are our understanding of the business and system upgrade projects we delivered. Yethi has supported 125+ banks and financial institutions in 30+ countries in their transformation and upgrade projects. In the 700+ projects we have completed so far, we have achieved quality and punctuality by completing the projects within strict deadlines.

We manage end-to-end test lifecycles efficiently to ensure customers receive quality outcomes within the project deadline. We have conducted end-to-end functional testing and non-functional testing in upgrade testing projects. We have also validated the robustness and responsiveness of systems while ensuring stability and flexibility in data migration and systems performance testing.

We leverage the highest potential of our robotic codeless test automation solution Tenjin during repeated regression cycles in a project. Our intuitive and intelligent solution comes with banking and FI-specific plug-and-play adapters that reduce implementation hassles with banking applications. Tenjin offers data-driven test execution and covers pre- and post-regression cases and effortless system integration testing, user functionality testing, user acceptance, regression testing and more. It comes with easy report generation capabilities and integration with defect management tools to generate test summary reports.

Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) chooses Tenjin, Yethi’s Testing Automation platform to test its T24 banking solution

Commercial bank of africa

27th May, 2019: Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) has selected Tenjin—Yethi’s Robotic Test Automation platform to test its core banking solution by Temenos (T24 – Version R18). CBA was in pursuit of a low-maintenance, seamless, effective, and easy-to-use Test Automation Solution. Yethi’s Tenjin met their requirements after a detailed evaluation among the leading players in the market. This is Yethi’s first T24 project in the African Continent, which will demonstrate the versatility and robustness of Tenjin given the complex nature of the ongoing T24 upgrade.

Commercial Bank of Africa, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, has been rated by Global Credit Ratings (GCR) with a national scale long-term rating of A+ and short-term rating of A1. CBA is a pioneer in leveraging technology innovations and aims to transform the African banking sector with a unique range of banking products and solutions. M-Shwari, a mobile banking application launched in partnership between Safaricom and CBA, reached 10 million customers within 18 months of its launch.

Moses Abwoga – Head of Enterprise Projects Management said, “We have always been associated with using innovative technology to augment the manner of interaction that our customers have with our bank. Effectively testing our banking solution to prevent any future errors is a major step towards fulfilling our motive of creating engaging customer experience journeys. We are extremely happy to select TENJIN to assist us in our testing activities during T24 upgrade. We look forward to reap the benefits associated with Tenjin and reduce our overall testing efforts.”

Speaking on the engagement, Srirang Srikantha, COO, Yethi added, “We are extremely happy to be working with the Commercial Bank of Africa. Tenjin’s core features such as naviflow learner, result validator, test management, and task scheduler will help in developing a robust solution enabling CBA to elevate its customer experience.”

About Tenjin

Tenjin is an advanced test automation tool which meets the changing needs of testing in banking enterprises. Its core features such as naviflow learner and robotic units that spontaneously determine and learn the application interface are the reason why some of the most complicated systems in the world use it to improve the efficiency of operations. As a plug-and-play and banking aware solution, Tenjin works within the bounds of regulatory requirements and is instinctively conscious of different transactions, making it a blueprint for successful testing of banking applications. The high-speed solution includes changes automatically without additional programming, relying on robotic learning for quick integration with high levels of consistency. Tenjin Test Automation works with major core banking and digital platforms and is adopted by banks across 15 countries.

To know more please visit https://yethi.in/tenjin-test-automation-suite/

About Commercial Bank of Africa

Commercial Bank of Africa, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, is one of the largest privately owned banks in Kenya. A member of the Commercial Bank of Africa Group, CBA is licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya. Apart from providing a wide range of financial services, CBA’s core mission is to enhance the wealth and financial goals of their customers.

To know more please visit https://cbagroup.com/mission-and-vision/.

Struggling with complex  nature of the ongoing T24 upgrades ?

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Why is the Browser and API Testing Shift Left?

Browser and API testing

Quality assurance and software testing are the key areas of the software development phase. The current scenario is that the software development lifecycle (SDLC) demands integrating testing simultaneously with development. To assess the quality of test codes with ease, teams find it easy to execute testing soon after the development stage across the CI/CD pipeline for better quality checks. It is referred to as shift left testing.

Shift left, initially conducted at the end of the software development lifecycle, is now executed simultaneously in each stage of development (testing comes to the left of the development stage in the workflow process). This technique is becoming exceedingly popular and driving the growth of DevOps and other modern development techniques.

Testing is introduced in the early stage of the product development lifecycle, which allows the team to detect potential bugs, improve brand affinity by building products that customers desire and save time and money for their organizations. After the developers added the end-to-end browser and API testing to CI/CD pipelines, the scope of testing and quality assurance practices have extended.

What is Browser testing?

Browser testing is a type of non-functional testing that validates the performance of a code on different browsers. In addition to this, browser testing also checks how test codes interact with essential data sources. By introducing browser testing to the early stage of the development process, the developers have added another layer of quality testing to check the code compatibility across different browsers. The QA practices are reformed with the addition of browser testing along with other shift-left testing techniques such as unit and security testing in CD/CI pipelines.

The key areas that are analyzed in browser testing

  1. Browser testing validates the basic functionality to ensure that most of these work on different browser combinations. The functionalities such as dialogue boxes, menus, the input fields in the forms, website handling first-party cookies, and seamless touch inputs for mobile and tablets are validated by browser testing.
  2. The website designer chooses a uniform design such as applications fonts, images, and layouts. The team executes browser testing to ensure that the design elements appear the same as the design shared before the execution of the step. 
  3. The team executes browser testing also to check if it meets the accessibility criteria. The account must be compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and accessible to all users with ease.
  4. Browser testing also validates the website responsiveness. The design team ensures that the website design seamlessly adapts and fits the different screen sizes and orientations.

What is API testing?

API testing is a software testing type where we test functionality, security, performance, reliability, accessibility, usability, and API attributes of an Application Programming Interface (API). API is a group of codes or collective codes replicating an interface between two computers. With the help of API, organizations can deploy external systems with their existing programs and extend the verification and computing services beyond the purview of the programs.

Let us start with an understanding of what the Application Programming Interface is. An application is integrated with many data, and how users can access these data through communication with the application interface. Now consider that an organization wants to deploy an external system with their existing one to extend services through other channels; API makes this process effortless.

This connected program and framework need an adequate assessment and verification. Organizations conduct testing at the API level to focus on assessing the business processes, application security, and data responses. As API testing is ideal for DevOps and the continuous testing process, the development and QA teams use and automate it.

API testing is important

API testing is an integral part of the Agile software development process, which needs to incorporate feedback immediately for a smooth process flow. The User Interface or UI testing is inadequate for validating API service functionality and fails to cover necessary aspects of back-end testing. It may lead to the rewriting of innumerable codes, often causing a delay in the product release and a rise in the cost of production. If not detected earlier, it may also result in bugs going unnoticed within the server or unit levels.

API and Unit tests are easy to maintain and effective, and organizations prefer them over other tests. Tests like the GUI test are hard to keep up with the pace of frequent changes in an Agile environment and require continuous reworking.

The developers can begin with API testing early in the development cycle. It allows the developers to resolve the bugs before they become a critical issue. API testing allows the development team to provide improved services and products to their customers. Incorporating API testing into the Agile methodologies can help engineering and development teams to improve the entire development lifecycle and provide outstanding quality products and services to their customers.

The key areas that are analyzed in API testing

The key areas that are analyzed in API are the responses of,

  • Reply time
  • Quality of data
  • Confirmation of authorization
  • HTTP status code and
  • Error codes

Benefits of API testing

  • API testing ensures that the connection among the shared platforms is accessible, reliable, and safe.
  • API test automation is faster and cost-efficient as it requires less code than automated GUI testing.
  • API testing helps developers identify errors in the early development stage and fix the issues before the product release. Developers can access the app to discover the grey areas early without a user interface, allowing them to save time and money.
  • API tests use JSON or XML, and it contains HTTP requests and responses, making them independent of language criteria.
  • API tests analyze applications of harmful codes and breakages. It protects applications by removing all possible vulnerabilities.
  • API tests can be easily integrated with GUI tests before performing the latter. API tests allows to integrate new users to facilitate the testing process.
  • API tests help in analyzing the non-functional tests like security and performance testing as well.

How are both “shift left testing”?

Before we investigate how the browser and API testing is shift-left testing, let us understand what shift-left testing is? Shift-left testing is also defined as “Early and Often” because it analyses the functional aspects of the product at the early stage of the Software Development Lifecycle.

It is easy for the development and testing team in the agile framework to detect the issues early rather than putting them up for the later stage of the software development lifecycle. DevOps executes comprehensive end-to-end automation to enhance product accuracy and efficiency. But, there are other essential functional and non-functional aspects of software testing that need consideration but often go unnoticed.

API testing and browser testing are the perfect examples of shift-left testing, which needs serious consideration to validate the overall quality of the software. By including browser testing and API testing, the production team combines all functional and non-functional aspects into CD/CI pipelines and Continuous testing in a cost-effective and time-effective manner. It helps in reducing operational expenses and maintaining high-quality standards with greater ease. 

API and browser testing is introduced in the agile workflow early during the software development lifecycle and simultaneously runs along with integration, user acceptance, performance, security testing and more. Testing of unit and element can be done separately and integrated with the product during assembling. The practice does not just enhance the product quality but also helps in reducing time, money, and effort. 

Developers verify end-to-end workflows by combing HTTP requests and API calls through API tests. It helps the team validate all the layers of their systems from worldwide locations. Often there can be changes in the UI features that can affect the application performance on the website. The users validate complex navigation with the help of browser testing to ensure that no changes should hamper the application performance and look. It captures user view early at the development stage. 

Tests like API and browser are “shifting left” to earlier stages of the development process to maintain the rapid development pace. Companies are moving towards leveraging CI/CD practices to ensure that the codes are ready to be deployed. By taking the API and browser codes through the CD/CI pipelines, developers can analyze the product compatibility with different browsers. It can also help in detecting bugs earlier in the development cycle.

Running browser and API tests in your CI pipelines can help the teams to compare the tests with data from different stacks like the front end, back end, application, and infrastructure. They will be able to detect and troubleshoot failed tests during the development stage that boosts the QA process and development lifecycle.

Shifting browser and API testing to the left are considered the best option. By doing this development team can monitor any fundamental changes immediately before the final code goes live. It will also help in improving an organization’s business and operational activities.

Conclusion

We follow an agile methodology and framework in Yethi. We have a well-structured and planned environment for continuous testing. Our codeless test automation platform, Tenjin, is a plug-and-play banking-aware solution that is easy to integrate and learn. Tenjin’s robotic capabilities enable to learn and adapt to the application and its updates. Regardless of the complexity and number of updates, Tenjin facilitates continuous testing, minimizing the manual effort and speeding up the test execution, thereby helping you launch your product early in the market.

Our testing solution allows you to test your software at the beginning of the development stage. Testing is executed simultaneously with the development process so that you can test as you build. Tenjin covers comprehensive end-to-end testing, ensuring you have the quality codes and the product. 

Test Automation ROI Primer

Test automation ROI primer

Software Testing Automation has gained significant acceptance in enterprises in recent years. Many organizations struggle to identify the value drivers in a test-automation purchase and might take decisions based on partial data. 

This article is an attempt to help people understand why automation would make sense, how to understand the various platforms out there, how to balance the economics and present an ROI to ensure proper communication of the expectations.

Let us start by understanding the need for testing automation –

Software is consistent – Any software will consistently perform actions as per the instructions. While the instruction set might be suspect, the software would be consistent irrespective of the day of the week, the temperature outside or any of the factors that impact humans.

Software is exact – Logical structures have no room for common sense.  So, the onus on the developer to understand intent and implications is high.  Given that majority of enterprise software, today consists of a myriad set of options, the chances that a particular combination of options (an option set) might work contrary to intentions is high. 

The software will evolve – Any software that you use is amorphous and would continue to evolve as long as there are customers and/or developers that wish to tinker. Change is typically due to innovation, competition, regulation, or adaptation. 

Software is fragile – New features and options must be delicately introduced, considering the existing options and their usage.  It is very much possible to unintentionally “break” an “option-set” while bringing in some new capabilities. 

Software Testing – Considering these attributes, it is imperative that software is tested – when it is designed, built, deployed, or modified. The discipline of software testing has been evolving in parallel to software development, albeit in the shadows. Considering the repetitive nature of software testing, a lot of research and effort has been spent on reducing the “drudgery” of the repetitive tasks by adopting automation in the practice of testing.  Automated testing is a large part of the public debate and we have explored why exploratory and automated testing needs to coexist in our article here.    

In this article, we would attempt to share how test automation supports the mission of consistently deploying reliable software and how one could explore the ROI of these efforts. This is important as Test Automation is primarily a tool to improve efficiency and not a tool to improve the effectiveness of your tests.  

What Constitutes Test Automation

The practice of software testing essentially is a stimulus-response study. You provide stimulus to the software (“Application under-test” or AUT) and validate if its response meets a predetermined criterion. 

The profession of software testing is to

  1. identify various stimulus-response conditions (test-cases) that could be encountered during the use of the software
  2. plan and execute a sequence of such test-cases
  3. capture and report software behavior,

Test Automation is an aid to a software tester, where the execution and reporting of a certain subset of cases are delegated to the automation software. 

 Automation allows teams to focus on “net-new”

As software gets enriched, the testing burden shifts from testing “new” feature to testing the “existing” features.  In the graph, we have shown 5 sprints where each bar represents newsprint.  The “new” functionality in each sprint is shown in “blue” and the “existing” features from previous sprints are in “grey”. You would notice that while the volume of new features is relatively steady, the volume of “existing” features has grown with every release.    

While leaders are happy to spend time/effort on testing the blue portions, the repetitive testing of the grey portions is a shoe that pinches. Re-testing of functionality that has been available for a few releases represents a unique set of challenges across all stakeholders. From a tester’s perspective, it is repetitive and therefore boring. It is very likely to only get a cursory look-over and not an in-depth review.  From a sponsor’s perspective, it represents an ever-increasing volume of work that often has a low-return element.  Therefore, we risk under-testing and letting defects slip into “deemed-stable” portions of our software.  Test-automation represents a middle path, where the code can be tested for a larger sample of usage conditions at a lower cost-time construct where only the exceptions are picked-up for further evaluation. 

What benefits can I expect? What benefits should I not expect?

The investment in the right automation tool once set up offers potential benefits like:

Coverage: You could achieve a higher test coverage / larger sampling of the software functionality, faster and at a lower execution effort, than what you would get with pure manual efforts. 

Speed:  Automated tests can run faster and round the clock.  These could reduce your overall time-to-test significantly, giving more time to development teams to fix any potential issues. 

Consistency: Test automation tools offer maximum consistency. The same test case runs multiple times without even a minor deviation.

Effort:  Test Automation can be set up to run with little or no manual intervention. 

The Caveats

Setup: Setting up tests on any automation tool is a laborious task.  It requires planning and foresight that only experience would bring. Knowledge of how data changes across time, what variables would need to be dynamically updated and how to validate expected outcomes etc. require experience and time. 

Maintenance:  Once you have set up a large library of cases to be automatically executed, it should be smooth sailing; or so we think!!  The challenge of test automation (and therefore where money is generally made or lost) is how easy it would be to maintain this comprehensive library when your underlying application changes. When the “Application-Under-Test” changes, you would have to identify all aspects of your automation that consequently need a change.  

Test Automation – Understanding Costs & Benefits

Companies are increasingly investing in test automation considering the increased frequency of changes and anticipated cost-benefit. The investment in the right automation tool is worth it, as it offers potential benefits like:

Coverage: Test automation offers high test coverage with nearly 100% results, which otherwise cannot be achieved by manual testing.

Consistency: Test automation tools offer maximum consistency. The same test case was run multiple times without deviation.

Speed: Automation is multiple times greater than the manual testing speed. 

Effort: The manual effort in executing a test automation tool is almost negligible.

Test-automation solutions are varied and bring different categories of over-bearing costs

The cost of the test automation can be categorized as:

  • Acquisition cost
  • Maintenance cost

Acquisition cost: There are some free test automation tools available in the market. The free versions mostly perform basic functions and are not recommended for thorough end-to-end or regression testing.

To buy an efficient test automation tool, you will require to make some investment. A licensed and open-source automation tool may start with as low as $4000, depending on the brand and functionality it offers. The total acquisition cost is often inclusive of the tool cost and construction cost. Before investing in the tool, it is recommended to do thorough research and understand the right tool that will complement your requirements perfectly.

Maintenance cost: The maintenance cost of automated tests drives expenses up. Maintenance may involve a range of factors:

  • Process
  • User interface
  • Data
  • Environment

However, maintenance of automated tests may cost you a bit, statistics reveal the fact that maintenance can be a lot cheaper affair than creating new test scripts. Furthermore, frequent maintenance will keep the system efficient and seamless. Maintenance is a good option while considering the cost model of the project, as manual testing or implementing new automation tools can be expensive and time-consuming.

Diagram Description automatically generated with medium confidence

Test Automation ROI

Now that we have given you an understanding of the costs and benefits of test automation, we go further deep into exploring the ROI of these efforts. Companies are constantly investing in test automation, but investment in test automation without proper calculation of ROI would be a half-baked effort, which is unacceptable for the companies.

At the beginning of this article, we have stated that test Automation is primarily a tool to improve efficiency, and the calculation of ROI determines the efficiency of your test automation process. Test automation is a one-time investment. Configuring the test automation at the initial stage of project inception can maximize the benefits in the long run. By calculating ROI, companies can decide to invest in test automation.

Calculating ROI does not necessarily mean that we would focus on the overall cost, which is required to evaluate the quality of the product. ROI calculation also includes the parameters like late releases, defects overlooked, and lack of quality.

One of the biggest challenges that the companies face is investing a large sum of money for conducting the end-to-end testing of software, which often they are unable to recoup. Once the companies decide what test sets or subsets they must automate, they will generate a high return on investment.

Due to poor decision-making, companies may spend a lot to adopt automation at the later stage of development, and if the project fails, they may incur a high loss. ROI-based automation testing resolves this issue. The Quality Assurance team decides which section must be automated based on the clients’ environment, system, and machine. They can do a cost comparison analysis of manual test runs and automation test runs and determine the types of scripts that can be automated.

Following are the significant metrics, which can be considered while calculating automated testing ROI.

  • Measure product quality – Ensuring the overall quality of the product by identifying defects and mean time to detection of defects.
  • Test execution speed – Comparing the test run duration percentage between automated and manual testing.
  • Thorough cost and resource analysis – Analyzing cost and resources are important as the test automation process involves software and hardware costs, prioritizing defects based on their severity, operational costs, the requirement of new resources, training costs, and more.

With the metrics mentioned above, we can calculate Automated Testing ROI. The cost that companies bear on resources, tools used, setting up the testing framework and more fall under companies’ investments. The net gain that the companies receive over their investments would be the ROI for the automation testing.

Following are the parameters required for performing ROI calculation.

Automating new tests – There are always a certain amount of costs involved in automating new tests. Before initiating the automation of new tests, companies must consider the predictable costs of developing, executing, and maintaining the tests. Based on the test categorization, you would segregate the test to automate or run manually.

Automate regression testing – Adding new features or changes in software would introduce new bugs in the existing modules. It makes regression testing one of the most expensive phases of testing. It is a necessary step to calculate the cost of automating regression testing.

Managing Multiple Environments – As companies develop products, they must be convinced that their product works equally in different environments. Hence, companies set up multiple platforms, devices, and browsers to ensure the success of their products. For organizations, it is necessary to calculate the ROI while setting up test environments.

Minimizing Defect Leakage – There are instances where bugs were detected at the production phase, as they were not resolved at the development stage. It often leads to defect leakage in the production phase, making it an expensive issue for organizations. Calculating ROI is necessary for companies to control such overhaul expenditures in certain instances.

Reusable test cases – Using reusable test cases saves time and effort by avoiding task duplication. When you already have created test cases, you can reuse them in multiple scenarios. Hence this will impact while calculating ROI.

Protecting product knowledge – Companies may still gain control over their systems and software, but they need to take a calculative risk on their resources. If an engineer leaves, the company must look for a replacement and provide training for the job. It may impact the company’s long-term automation testing ROI.

Ways to improve Automated Testing ROI

Instead of automating all the tasks at hand, it is best to automate repetitive tasks. Automating the applications, which are not steady, may not show an accurate result. Moreover, it may increase your team’s effort and affect while calculating ROI.

Automation testing works best for regression testing. Hence, when new tests and integrated with the older ones and applications are tested across various platforms, automation testing can be implemented to save time, effort, and overall costs. Further, if you need to complete the test run in a shorter time, you can run parallel testing like a smoke test.

Changes are introduced frequently in software. Hence, the developers and testers are relying on exploratory testing which is widely used in agile models. The focus of exploratory testing is discovering, investigating, and learning through the process. The testers here own the freedom and responsibility to think and note down ideas before the test execution. As exploratory testing is strategic, it helps in improving automated testing ROI.

The testing process has evolved, and today shift-left testing is a popular step in the software development lifecycle. Shift-left testing allows you to detect defects in the early stage, which helps in reducing effort, time, and money. You could also use test management tools to identify redundant test cases at the early stage of the development process. Finally, keep thorough documentation of the process so that the newly hired resources can pick up where your previous resources have left.

Conclusion

The company adopts automation testing to improve its test efficiency and test coverage. Of all the possible methods, which could be applicable for calculating the automated testing ROI, the company must adopt the strategies, which work best for them and suffice their requirements.

When it is about improving the quality of your product, the right methodology would be to test your applications simultaneously while developing them. If defects are detected at the postproduction stage, the company will suffer monetary loss, which may be unacceptable for any organization. Hence, a little strategy, the right tool, and differentiation between manual and automation testing can successfully help you implement test automation ROI.

What is Static Testing

Static Testing

Organizations do not immediately execute software testing after receiving the project details. From acquiring project details to test execution there is a critical step of requirement validation that deals with related documentation and helps in smoothening the testing process. It is an essential step in the software development and testing processes, which cannot be neglected. While testing helps understand the efficiency of the code and other functionalities and identifies any errors or discrepancies that affect the quality of the software, requirement validation and documentation help you prepare for software test execution. The checking of this documentation comes under the purview of static testing.

There are two critical methods of Testing; they are Static Testing and Dynamic Testing.

Static Testing: It is a testing method that allows a user to examine the software/program and all the related documents without executing the code.

Dynamic Testing: On the other hand, dynamic testing checks the application when the code is executed.

Both these methods are essential and frequently used together to ensure that the applications are functional. However, this article highlights the static testing approach, which is crucial for the software development lifecycle but often is taken for granted. It is an assessment process to check the code and requirement documents to find errors early in the development phase.

Why is Static Testing used?

Static testing is performed to check the code and design documents and requirements for coding errors. The aim is to find the flaws in the early stage of development. Static Testing makes it easy to find sources of potential errors.

The users and developers static test the code, design documents, and requirements before executing the code. Checking the functional requirements is also possible. The process explicitly reviews the written material that gives a broader view of the software being tested.

Following are some documents that are checked during the Static Software Testing Process.

  1. Requirement Specifications
  2. Design documents
  3. User documents
  4. Web page content
  5. Source code, Test cases, test data, and test scripts
  6. User documents
  7. Specification and matrix documents

What are the errors that can be detected during Static Software Testing?

 Types of defects that can be easier to find during static testing are as follows –

  1. Deviations from standards
  2. Non-maintainable code
  3. Design defects
  4. Missing requirements
  5. Inconsistent interface specifications

Why is Static Testing used?

Static Testing is specifically used to identify any flaws in functionalities or possible coding errors in the initial stages before the code is executed.

Following are some benefits of using Static Testing –

  1. Detection and correction of potential coding errors
  2. Cost Efficiency – A reduced cost that goes into rework to fix errors
  3. Time Efficiency – A reduced time that goes into rework
  4. Feedback received at this stage helps improve the functioning of the project
  5. Once the developer moves to Dynamic Testing, the number of errors is limited. It makes the code maintainable
  6. The process also helps the developers identify the quality issues in the software
  7. There are automated tools available that make this process of reviewing the code and other documents faster and easier
  8. Static Testing also boots communication among inter-functional teams

What are Static Testing Techniques?

Static Testing is carried out in two steps –

  1. Static Review
  2. Static Analysis

Static review is done to find and rectify ambiguities and errors in supporting documents like requirement specification, software design documents, and test cases.

These documents can be reviewed in various ways, such as –

  1. Walkthrough
  2. Peer review
  3. Inspection

In the second step of Static Analysis, the code written by developers is analyzed. This step helps us identify and rectify structural defects that may become errors or bugs when the code is executed.

Static Analysis helps the developer to find the following types of errors –

1. Wrong Syntax

2. Unused variable or variables with undefined values

3. Dead code

4. Infinite loops

Static Analysis is of 3 types –

1. Data Flow – Related to stream processing

2. Control Flow – Determining how the statements and instructions are executed

3. Cyclomatic Complexity – Determining the complexity of the program that is related to the number of independent paths in the control flow graph of the program

There are various other techniques used while performing Static Testing; following are some of the common ones –

  1. Use Care Requirement Validation: This technique ensures that the end-user functionalities are defined properly
  2. Functional Requirement Validation: This technique identifies all requirements for the project
  3. Review of Architecture: In this technique, all business-level processes are analyzed
  4. Field Dictionary Validation: This technique helps us analyze all User Interface related fields

Static Software Testing Process may be conducted in the following ways –

  1. Manually
  2. With the use of Automated Testing Tools

How is Static Software Testing Reviewed?

Review is the most crucial step in the Static Software Testing process. These reviews are conducted to identify and rectify any potential errors in the supporting documents. The reviews can be walkthroughs, informal reviews, technical reviews, or inspections.

Walkthrough – The author of the specific document explains the document to the team and peers. The author also answers the questions and queries from the team.

Technical Review – Technical Specifications are reviewed by the peers to ensure all the functionalities are reflected in the software and the potential errors are identified and rectified.

Inspection – A dedicated moderator conducts strict reviews to ensure that the Static Testing process is completed efficiently to make the application as robust as possible.

Informal Reviews – Informal reviewers do not follow any specific process. Co-workers review the documents and provide internal comments.

Conclusion

Used to evaluate the code and requirement documents, static testing is essentially used to assess the written code. Organizations incorporate static testing methodologies either manually or by automation to detect the code error early in the test lifecycle, which plays a critical role in improving the quality and reducing cost and effort.

At Yethi, we offer a thorough requirement analysis, planning/scenario design, and reviews. We ensure maximum quality at different test stages. Before executing the tests, we review business processes, products, applications, and integrations to ensure optimum test coverage. We neatly arrange the steps like reviews and analysis to execute a well-structured testing process.

All that you need to know about Cloud Testing

Introduction

Digitalization is driving transformation!

In recent years, many digital platforms were developed to address user requirements, and innovation is still underway. Since we use the digital platform in every sphere of our life, technology and innovation will keep emerging. Just while we continue developing more digital platforms, we need to be confident about their performance and user acceptance. Testing becomes extremely important as it ensures that the software performance is top-notch, and end-users can reap the benefits of these applications. As digital platforms are evolving, so is testing. From manual testing to automation, the testing phase has moved further to Cloud testing.

What is Cloud testing?

Testing of applications using cloud computing services is known as cloud testing. Cloud testing focuses on faster availability while ensuring scalability and flexibility, and helps in saving time and cost, which is an ultimate requirement for software testing. The purpose of cloud testing is to check and validate the functional and non-functional requirements of software using cloud computing. Cloud testing allows testing of software over an internet-based platform and remotely provides many computing services like hardware, software, and other computer-related services.

Following are the main models of Cloud Computing,

Models of Cloud Computing

Types of Testing in the Cloud

The applications can undergo following types of testing in the cloud.

1. Functional testing

Functional software testing examines all the features and functional requirement of software. It also checks how software interacts with hardware.

  • System testing — Through this testing system’s compliance is evaluated for its functional and system requirements.
  • Acceptance testing — Acceptance testing ensures that an application can meet customer requirements.
  • Integration testing — This testing checks if the application is compatible with different platforms and works even when it is moved from one cloud infrastructure to another.

2. Non-functional testing

Non-functional testing in the cloud allows you to validate the non-functional features of software such as performance, usability, and reliability.

  • Security testing — Security testing of application ensures that data is stored and transmitted safely.
  • Stress testing — Executing Stress testing help you in evaluating your application performance under excessive stress.
  • Performance testing — Performance testing ensures that the application performs correctly with various numbers of users, while cloud solutions should be scalable on-demand.
  • Load testing — Load testing helps in measuring software response time when the load is increased in system.
  • Latency testing — Latency test allows you to measure the application response delay after deploying it in the cloud.

3. Ability testing

To verify whether users really receive application services on-demand, ability testing is necessary.

  • Compatibility testing — As the name suggests, the compatibility testing helps in evaluating the application’s compatibility with various environments and platforms.
  • Disaster recovery testing — Disaster recovery testing helps in evaluating disaster recovery time and ensure that the application is available to users with minimum data loss.
  • Multi-tenancy testing — Multi-tenancy testing verifies application’s ability to ensure the level of security and access control for multiple users in the cloud.

Benefits of Cloud Testing

Cloud-based testing is widely accepted over traditional manual testing. Here are the following reasons:

  • Scalability — Business requirements keep changing frequently. Based on these requirements, cloud computing resources can be increased or decreased, ensuring the scalability of the technology.
  • Time-efficient — Cloud testing allows you to run your applications on various hardware. Hence, testers have enough time to fix the bugs making the technology more time-efficient.
  • Cost-efficient — Cloud testing allows you to pay only for those resources, testing environment, hardware, and software that you might use.
  • Easy test environment configuration — Cloud-based tools allow you to set up a test environment on multiple devices, saving you time and money. It can also detect the errors during environment configuration across all devices.
  • Easily customizable — Cloud testing provides easily customizable options by using cloud-based tools and services. Testers can easily emulate an end-user-centric environment saving you time and money.
  • Ensure comprehensive testing — Cloud testing creates an all-device platform and configuration, eliminating the need for multiple devices and facilitating comprehensive testing.
  • Faster testing — Cloud-based testing tools enable software test automation reducing, time to the market. It has eliminated the need for having separate testing infrastructure while enhancing team collaboration and improving testing.
  • Continuous availability — Software testing is available to the testers anytime and anywhere to speed up their software development lifecycle with its continuous availability.
  • Improve team collaboration — Companies can improve their team collaboration by implementing DevOps in the cloud. The team collectively can try different configurations and data and automate testing processes using tools.

Four main categories of Cloud testing

  • SaaS testing in Cloud – Based on the application requirements, functional and non-functional testing is executed.
  • Testing using entire cloud – Based on the cloud features, where the cloud is considered as an entity, testing is executed by Cloud and SaaS vendors, as well as end-users.
  • Testing within a cloud – Cloud vendors can check internal features to carry out testing.
  • Testing across cloud – Utilizing different types of cloud environment, the testing is executed.

Cloud Testing’s Core Components

The testing is executed of these core components to ensure the following aspects.

Cloud Core Component

Conclusion

The expert team at Yethi understands the importance of testing across multiple devices and networks. As swift changes in digital environment redefine consumer and retail banking, we are providing exhaustive test-coverage throughout all aspects of digital transformation and application testing like Functional, UI/UX, Performance, Compatibility, Security, Geo-based and network testing, by enabling testing across multiple devices, OSes, and browsers,

With cloud testing, we ensure timely testing of digital and mobile assets by incorporating real-time testing of both native and hybrid mobile applications across multiple platforms, thereby eliminating delays and redundancies and saving time and money.

Discover the Test Data Management Techniques in Banking that empower Software Testing

The Growing Need for Test Data Management

Early in 2018 four major Banks in the US had clients up in arms when, for several hours, banking services were not accessible via their mobile banking apps. The interrupted services were attributed to a major spike in traffic due to it being payday. Notwithstanding, reputational damage had been done to the banks and, adding to their woes, a social media tirade on platforms like Twitter, where irate clients vented their frustrations and further lambasted the banks, ensued. The experience of these banks again highlighted the importance of software system testing in banking and financial services. However, software system testing is only as good as its test data management strategy, which should be adopted and implemented to:

  • Manage test and development processes to meet testing and application development requirements
  • Secure data and streamline cloning processes, delivering clones needed to meet upgrade and patch cycles as well as maintain data security
  • Identify appropriate replicable accounts and transactions from production to meet test criteria
  • Mitigate the threat of identity theft concerns among consumers and regulators
  • Improve turn-around-times during system upgrades through improved planning of data refreshes and overall data utilization.

The importance of test data management in testing

At its core, data management is the science of creating and maintaining the data sets generated by software system testing, driven by cause-effect relationships, producing predictable outcomes and responses. These data sets can be generated entirely by the tester, by simulating each stage of the customer or transaction journey, producing what is called synthetic data. Alternatively, data generated by actual transactions and previously recorded is called migrated data, providing authentic sets. Each of these forms of data generation has its value and challenges.

Synthetic data needs to be interoperable, able to account for diverse systems in varying environments without diluting the complexity of inter-relationships. Besides, the data needs to be refreshed and valid for multiple rounds of testing and if in an automated environment, should not need to be updated by manual intervention. Migrated data, in turn, is drawn from authentic transactions has limited reusability across different test-cycles, hamstrung further by data confidentiality obligations.

Mitigating the risks inherent in Test Data Management

Implementing a Test Data Management strategy requires that several risks and their potential impacts be considered. The complexity of the data, structured or unstructured, whether the databases are new or from legacy systems and how the data is stored. If kept in multiple environments, it may have the added challenge of access sensitivities and potential confidentiality breaches. Assessing the time available for data discovery, its generation and management is another factor that is paramount in ensuring representative samples are obtained. Besides, test data management requires different types of data for different types of testing, from performance through to user acceptance testing, so data needs to be organized correctly to fit within the required time and budgetary constraints. Another potential risk is the measure to which the organization operates in a distributed multi-supplier or outsourced environment, with multiple users accessing the data in multiple locations. Operating in such an environment also highlights the importance of data security and protection. As a standard, new security protocols will be required as well as staff training, highlighting the importance of protecting live production data as well as guarding test environments.

Empowered Software Testing through Test Data Management

Given the dynamic nature of the banking environment and the need to ensure optimized and efficient process continuity, any process that does not facilitate this expediency will have a negative impact on the entire system. Accordingly, if the process of choosing, interpreting and scrutinizing test results is time-consuming, arduous, and requiring specific knowledge of underlying applications, it will have a direct negative impact on the entire system. The time it takes for reporting and information sharing in an organization can also be a significant factor in the efficiency of the entire organization.

To meet these dual needs of time and efficiency, banks should implement the following test data management techniques, while taking care to mask sensitive information:

  1. Database cloning through the copying of production data
  2. Data sub-setting by substituting production data when appropriate, &
  3. Synthetic data generation, through the production of synthetic data based on a clear understanding of the underlying data model, which requires no de-identification

Yethi, a leader in software solutions and quality assurance in global banking and financial services has developed substantial expertise in creating end-to-end enterprise-wide test data management services which include data quality assessment, data masking, data subset, data archiving, data cleansing and data optimization. Yethi also assures that through rigorous control the thorough management of test data is ensured, beginning with quality assured consistent data. Data security and privacy are also safeguarded, while storage requirements and software costs are significantly reduced.

8 reasons why a Programmatic Bank Software Test Automation Project fails

Software testing in the banking industry is an important exercise performed to accommodate and reflect operational changes. Given the surge in use of banking applications and technology, the industry is dependent on testing. While manual testing is still required to test the application before it goes live, automated testing helps reduce time to market and improves the quality of the application in the production stage.

While automated testing tools make testing easier, they come with their own set of challenges. Test automation projects require unique scripting skills that testers sometimes lack. The most demanding phase of an automation project is the initial stage when tools are set up and test scripts are written.

Even when an automated testing solution is implemented, chances of failure often frustrate banks. This is mainly because of the flawed implementation of the solution or investments in automation failing to deliver on their promise.

Let us look at other reasons why a bank’s software test automation project fails:

1. Automation testing requires special programming skills

Testing an automation software solution requires unique programming skills and most testers come with domain and application knowledge. Consequently, they struggle with testing automated software. The solution is to use a script-less automated testing software for better efficiency.

2. Timely reflection of changes

Another reason for automation projects to fail is that the changes, be it by the regulatory authority or product updates take too much time to reflect on the bank’s system as well as the third-party systems.

3. Underestimating the complexity of the automated testing tool

Most automation tools are tested to handle simple cases with 5 or 10 screen workflows. When it comes to a banking solution, there could be over 5,000 screens with over 50,000 fields. This could be challenging for even the best automation solution. It could further lead to wrong ROI calculations and pose some serious technical challenges while dealing with different technologies of the bank’s underlying applications.

4. Inflexibility in testing

Factors such as dual authentication can be frustrating in the testing activity. Not solving this issue can be one of the primary reasons why a bank’s software testing automation project fails.

5. Use of various technologies

Most banks have diverse applications in use, on various technologies. Accommodating changes on all the user interfaces and APIs requires handling multiple UI types –web, desktop, and mainframes. Failure to do so could mean failure of the automation project.

6. Choosing a wrong protocol to automate

While planning an automated testing activity, one must plan the testing activity and the test process efficiently to see which is the process that needs manual testing and which ones could be automated. Any wrong move in planning can result in failure of the automation testing project.

7. Not being able to reuse the testing solution

As a testing solution has a higher initial cost, banks must plan in such a way that the same testing solution can be used for multiple functions and must be easy to navigate.

8. Having no validation

A testing solution must make room for validation—validating the software at the end of the development process to see if the software meets the expectations and requirements. In the banking domain, the testing solution must be able to test loan schedules, interest charged, charges, accounting entries, exchange rates, messages, and client communications.

Failure to do so could cause the automation project to fail. It all boils down to this—plan proactively and do not underestimate the tool, the deadline, and the resources to ensure the success of the testing project.

A script-less easy-to-use automation solution can help banks meet their testing needs. The Tenjin Automation Suite makes uninterrupted banking operations a possibility.

Learn more about Tenjin here