Seven Proven Strategies for Digital Testing Success Table of Contents

seven proven strategies for digital testing success table of contents

03 Digital consumers infographics

04 Testing in the digital age

06 Conclusion

07 About amdocs

2 the world is becoming increasingly more networked and interconnected

By 2020, more than 5.7 billion people around the globe Performance has a direct impact on are projected to be using mobile phones, changing the the bottom line: rules of engagement for companies in nearly every sector A single second delay can lead to 11% fewer page of the economy. views, which translates into 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and 7% loss in conversion Businesses strive to offer more tailored and personalized services and to engage customers into a dialog through 1 social media, turning passive consumers into members sec of their online social circle. Today’s consumers are more demanding, expecting performance, responsiveness, convenience, intuitive functionality, and personalized user Sites than load within 5 seconds double their mobile ad experience. The newly emerged “Generation C” – a digital revenue multi-age tribe of connected, creative and collaborative individuals who feel completely at home with digital 5 technology – are setting new standards for quality, speed sec and convenience.

Consumers don’t hesitate to switch providers or delete an app if the level of performance doesn’t meet their expectations:

58% 86% of consumers expect a 2 will delete an app from their smartphone app to load sec smartphone because of in under 2 seconds performance problems

53% Mobile users are 5X more of visits are 3 likely to abandon their sec abandoned if a mobile task if the site is not site takes more than 3 optimized for mobile seconds to load

90% 52% of users report say that poor mobile experience stopping using an makes then less likely to engage app due to poor with a company performance

Sources: Mediashift, Experience Dynamics, DoubleClick 3 testing in the Productive cross-functional collaboration in a DevOps setting begins with defining quality and performance digital age requirements and obtaining consensus from the key stakeholders on the essential Service Level Agreements

Modern-age digital testing bears little resemblance to (SLAs). conventional testing practices of the past. To successfully • How many users is the application expected to support? adapt to digital realities, testers need to expand the • What are the most business critical transactions and scope of their testing and quality activities and build a business processes? portfolio of testing strategies that can support business • What are the acceptable response times on mobile, growth. Amdocs Testing Services has helped hundreds desktop or other devices? of leading global service providers build and execute their Based on these any other essential questions, QA, digital testing strategies. Below, we share some of the key business, and engineering need to decide on how the elements of what it means to be a successful tester in the application should be built to achieve these SLAs. connected age and which elements must be considered To ensure that problems are detected early, before when building a testing policy for the future. they become costly production defects, QA needs to continuously test the application functionality, security

1. Institute a digital testing strategy and performance throughout the lifecycle and collaborate Mobile, social, IoT, cloud and analytics are the biggest with teams in both pre- and post-production on ongoing factors that impact business opportunities and revenue testing and monitoring strategies and metrics. growth. Yet, many companies still don’t have a tangible plan on how to modernize their testing approach to 3. Find the right amount of test coverage adapt to the new digital realities. Like all changes, a shift How much to test and which platforms to focus on in testing strategy is a continuous process that requires has always been a difficult question for the QA team. involvement of all key stakeholders in the organization. Finding the right balance between speed and coverage While there’s no prescription for a one-size-fits-all digital has become even more difficult in the digital age, testing transformation, it is essential to: with its ever-growing number of platforms, operating • First, recognize the need for change and the main systems, screen resolutions, browsers, and interconnected driving factors (e.g. accelerate time-to-market) applications and services. • Synch testing priorities with the business needs; agree on acceptable timeframes and levels of risk The key to determining the optimal amount of coverage is in looking beyond testing tools and metrics, and working Additional topics, such as testing tools, types of closely with the lines of business and the end-users to testing, automation, specialized testing resources, identify the most critical business processes, common and augmenting in-house testing with outsourcing are range of use, platforms, devices, connection speeds and discussed in more detail in subsequent sections. These other factors that will help determine which areas of an factors should be considered as part of your digital application need to be exercised to minimize the risk of testing strategy, and adjusted as you advance along the failure. journey of remaking your testing strategy for the digital age. 4. Invest in solutions that support digital technologies A new generation of digital testing software and 2. Focus on quality engineering by implementing DevOps platforms is now available to support quality processes The goal of DevOps is to deliver better applications for any size organization. While many of the traditional by building an integrated framework for managing automation tools and test repositories may still get the quality throughout the entire application lifecycle – from job done, consider implementing solutions that are tailor- engineering quality into the application design, to ongoing made for digital technologies and testing techniques. monitoring and analytics of application performance in production. Companies are adopting DevOps strategies to address growing business demands and make their delivery processes more nimble and agile. 4 Service Virtualization solutions to test applications built on distributed service architecture

Network (physical and virtual) testing tools to validate multiple interconnected layers – application, orchestration, virtualized functions, and the underlying infrastructure

Monitoring, diagnostics and analytics tools for monitoring application quality and performance in production and proactively identifying potential problems before they impact the end-user Among the most game-changing QA tools for the digital age are: Specialized mobile testing tools to validate application performance, functionality and security on a wide array of mobile devices

User experience testing tools for validating usability and accessibility for all type of potential application users.

These are just some examples of the many innovative testing solutions available today to facilitate any type of digital testing. Decisions such as which tools to select, whether to implement them on on-premises or as a service (SaaS), on a cloud or in the testing lab, etc. are all part of a long-term digital testing strategy.

5. The future of test automation is now that testers develop new specialized skills, especially Test automation is advancing in ways that have never as organizations transition to agile and DevOps been seen before. Once an exclusive domain of UI-based models. Familiarity with test environment and test record/replay techniques, automation has now evolved to data management, knowledge of analytics tools, test include scriptless tools and even AI and Machine Learning- automation expertise and a good understanding of driven robots. The new generation of testing tools and TDD, BDD and other contemporary delivery and testing “bots” can integrate themselves into the application and practices are among the most relevant skills for today’s record and replay tests without any human intervention, software testing professionals. A thorough assessment acquiring information and learning new tasks along the of existing skills, skill gap analysis and remediation/ way. While test bots are still considered an emerging augmentation plan should all be elements of any QA technique, it undoubtedly is going to revolutionize the group’s digital transformation strategy. Of course, you way QA teams approach test automation - and it’s likely still can’t discount the importance of the so-called “soft” to happen very soon. Self-aware, self-learning machines skills, including aptitude for strong communication, that can effortlessly analyze and utilize enormous ability to think analytically, work well as part of a cross- amounts of data are capable of testing faster and functional team and just generally being a fast learner smarter than human testers. An investment in these and quick thinker. But these skills alone may not be intelligent solutions today is going to help dramatically cut enough to help a company take the leap from traditional costs and improve quality in the very near future. testing practices into the domain of digital testing. QA is a demanding and fast-paced discipline, and it requires 6. Evaluate existing skillsets and recruit/retrain as specialized skills that test managers can either hire or needed develop in-house or augment with a help of a trusted 3rd The role of a software tester has undergone an incredible party service provider. transformation, and new approaches to testing demand 5 7. Find the right balance between in-house and outsourcing, onshore and offshore The decision to outsource application testing has never been driven exclusively by cost savings – it’s about finding the right balance between cost and quality outcomes, consistency and continuity, open communication and standardized quality processes and metrics throughout the organization. The popularity of agile and DevOps methods have further complicated the process of outsourcing quality, requiring QA and development to stay close together and collaborate on an ongoing basis. Still, finding the right outsourcing partner can help with more than just cost cutting or labor and skillset augmentation. A trusted provider can bring to the table a unique perspective, specialized industry expertise, proven toolsets and accelerators, access to test labs and device pools, knowledge and frameworks, and many other benefits that can help not only solve your current testing needs, but also define and implement a solid digital testing strategy for your organization going forward. in conclusion A modern approach to quality requires a balanced portfolio of testing approaches to ensure consistent customer satisfaction with every aspect of application functionality, performance, scalability and security, as well as continuous monitoring to predict outages and anticipate problems that can have a damaging affect on a company’s brand.

Amdocs Testing Services has a proven track record in all key aspects of Digital Testing and has helped many leading Communications Service Providers modernize their testing portfolios, facilitate DevOps and Agile transition, accelerate time to market and achieve higher levels of application quality and reliability. Amdocs Testing brings a unique set of methodologies, a portfolio of services tailored specifically to service providers, partnerships with the most innovative tool vendors and a team of experienced testing professionals to help address the quality needs of any size organization. Click here to learn more about Amdocs Digital Testing and how our solutions help deliver successful business outcomes for our customers.

6 about amdocs

Amdocs is a leading software & services provider to the world’s most successful communications and media companies. As our customers reinvent themselves, we enable their digital and network transformation through innovative solutions, delivery expertise and intelligent operations. Amdocs and its 25,000 employees serve customers in over 85 countries. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of $3.7 billion in fiscal 2016.