Approaching digital transformation from a testing perspective

At Jumar we deal with a wide variety of clients across several sectors who have embarked upon a digital transformation journey and one of the areas that we regularly engage in, is how you position your testing capability and strategy to support this.

There are a number of factors to consider when preparing your testing strategy and how this will effectively support all aspects required across E2E functional, non-functional, usability, omni channel testing and how this aligns with the organisation’s business strategy moving forwards.

In this first article, I wanted to explore where to start, what to consider, who should be engaged and how you begin pulling together a framework approach that will set you up for success, not only with programme delivery but also by providing the ability to support ongoing change and the need to ensure quality across multiple platforms and to scale as required.

Where to start?

It’s critical to understand your current test capability and how effectively this services the organisation currently and supports ongoing delivery. Do you currently support any digital platforms and if so, how efficient is this? What are some of the challenges that you currently face? Do you have a test framework that could scale to meet the demands of a digital transformation?

From experience, it is a valuable exercise to take stock of what you have and consider this as part of the overall test strategy moving forwards.

Key Considerations

As organisations look to leverage the latest technologies to grow and support innovation, digital transformation is at the heart of this. To support this, software testing must ensure that those digital products and services are of the highest quality, given the immediate nature of interaction and feedback from end users.

There are a number of key components to consider within this:

• Security – ensuring that products and services are secure from cyber threats
• Accessible – are your products accessible to all users and have any potential barriers to this been removed?
• Automation – do you have a strategy to test automation which embeds this within the software delivery methodology and supports continuous testing and feedback
• Platforms – do you have an approach to testing which supports testing across multiple devices/browsers/IOT?
• Shift Left – an often-used term, but having the ability to test early and effectively supports the ability to detect issues early in the cycle
• Data and Environments – always a critical area for consideration when defining test strategy, which is often overlooked and can be hugely damaging in terms of time lost and testing that proves ineffective
• Performance and scalability – do you have a clear understanding and requirements in terms of this and a well-defined approach which effectively represents end-user interactions?
• End user interaction – consider carefully the needs of the end user and ensure the solution delivers an exceptional digital experience
• Speed to market – how will you optimise your testing approach to support the need to deliver quickly and regularly whilst maintaining a high level of quality?

Look out for our next article where I will delve deeper into these key components and explore how as an organisation you can pull all of these elements together into a cohesive test strategy and framework for delivery.

Ian Knowles 
Head of Assurance and Delivery