To keep up with new technology and customer demands the software development industry has no choice but to speed up. A combination of agile processes and continuous development practices has helped reduce project sprints from months to weeks, and even days. However, projects are still struggling to meet deadlines and budgets.
So, what’s the hold up?
Testing. Bottlenecks in testing caused by factors such as testers waiting for data, preparing test scripts and manual test case design, cause delays. In fact, testers can spend up to 50% of their time searching for the right data and 20% of the SDLC waiting for it.
Manually creating test data is not a viable option. It is tedious, error prone and rarely results in data that has sufficient test coverage, leading to bugs in production. Using masked data in development is sometimes the practice of choice, however this comes with its own problems. Masked data typically only offers around 10-20% coverage and so any sampling methods are unlikely to provide data that meets all the test cases required for a new subsystem.
In order to make a continuous delivery frameworks successful there is a need to evaluate existing testing practices and consider where improvements can be made. One major improvement to testing could be to introduce better Test Data Management strategies, with the goal of provisioning the right data to the right place at the right time, to avoid bottlenecks in testing that make Continuous Delivery impossible.
Synthetic test data generation can produce smaller, richer sets of test data that cover all possible scenarios, even when the event hasn’t occurred. Testers can request and access the test data quickly and easily, when they need it. Using the rich sets of test data, matched to specific test cases, testers can find the defects the first time round, avoiding time consuming rework that hinders Continuous Delivery.
The minimal rework needed due to clear requirements and rich sets of test data, delivered at the right time, to the right place, will make continuous delivery a reality and will enabling teams to deliver software on time and for less. Click below to download the latest whitepaper, “Test Data Management: How It May Be the Only Way to Drive Continuous Delivery.”