Is Your Enterprise Prepared for Agile Test Data Management?

Tags: testing
Published: 2021-12-16 13:24:37

Most firms are embracing agile approaches, and as a result, they understand the value of continuous testing. Rapid access to relevant test data is required as part of the transition to a more flexible and dynamic development process. Managing test data increases the quality of testing efforts, whether through functional testing, performance testing or [automated testing services](https://www.openteqgroup.com/qa-testing-services) virtualization.

IT organisations spend 30% of their time and effort dealing with test data management issues, as well as costly CAPEX and maintenance expenditures for test environments due to data volume that is comparable to production. Businesses that use live data for testing run the risk of breaking compliance, regulatory, and consumer confidence because there is no clear, consistent, and repeatable approach for delivering test data that is "fit for purpose" and delivers better test coverage.
The effects of poor test data management
Higher costs and longer cycle times have resulted from test inefficiency.
Data storage and upkeep are expensive.
Added debugging and analytical work Added business risk due to insufficient or erroneous test results
There is a possibility of data security breach when using production data.
The cost of test data may continue to represent a significant portion of the overall testing cost. The higher the quality of your test data, however, the more effective your testing efforts will be.
In a competitive industry, can you afford the cost of failure?
Managing test data quality is exceedingly tough due to data sensitivity, complicated infrastructure, many data sources, and, of course, limited availability. The ability and availability of high-quality, as-real-as-possible 'test data' determines the performance of any business testing. As a result, a good Test Data Management system is essential to the success of your data strategy and overall performance testing strategy.

Clients typically inquire about the benefits of Agile Test Data Management operations in projects that take a long time and effort.
Some of these are:
Why do we need a separate team to provide test data for apps that are being evaluated?
Will the number of full-time equivalents (FTEs) be lowered as a result of this?
What are some of the benefits of having a TDM team?
What added value would the TDM team bring to the IT department?

Agile Test Data Management boosts productivity by at least 30% across a business. Even small businesses can save up to a million dollars every year, while large corporations can save tens of millions. Eliminating data-related issues early in the process saves a lot of money in the latter stages of the project.
Why is Agile Test Data Management so Important for Your Competitive Advantage?

How you manage test data determines whether you can control or increase complexity and IT costs. The more complex your test data becomes, the more talent you'll need to manage it, and the more expensive test data management becomes for your business.

Agile Test Data Management supports the management of test data by providing a richness of on-demand, fit-for-purpose data. A more efficient infrastructure, cheaper storage costs, and a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) arise from an intelligent data sub-setting system, as well as the installation of a more effective risk mitigation system. Agile Test Data Management also acts as a centralised data request and delivery system, which speeds up data provisioning. An automated test data technique and cloned data subsets reduce test cycle time even more, resulting in speedier test data setup.

According to Forrester, "in an Agile world, the majority of testing, including unit, functional, performance, and [integration testing](https://www.openteqgroup.com/qa-testing-services), must be done inside sprints," and "test data must be supplied to the teams continuously and refreshed during each sprint." Test data will be required for manual and functional automated testing, as well as user acceptance testing conducted across sprints.
There are several benefits of following a systematic Agile Test Data Management strategy:

Providing measurable outcomes, such as 30-40% faster release times.
Data protection standards and regulations are being observed, and software errors are down 15%.
Test data that is customised for various types of testing – functional, integration, performance, security, and so on – to ensure that test data is not overstepped by different teams.
Understanding test coverage and problem patterns is aided by the ability to trace test data back to test cases and business requirements.
The cycle time has been shortened.
Optimal sub-setting and the manufacture of gold copies (A gold copy is a reusable test data set that can be a full copy from production or a subset of engineered data).
The time between data refreshes has been reduced.
CPU consumption is reduced as a result of the lower volume of data consumed.
Budgets for non-production IT have been slashed.

Test data management is being influenced by the digital evolution and/or revolution, growing use of data analytics, and the demand from enterprises to produce software quality assurance testing faster. Test data architects should keep track of these changes while building and executing test data strategies. When building a successful test data strategy, keep the following factors and solution patterns in mind.

Agile and DevOps
Cloud TDM / Test Data Warehouse
Integration of a test management tool
Sub-setting with Accelerators and Process Packs
TDM in conjunction with Service Virtualization
Automation will shorten the time it takes for a product to reach the market and increase efficiency.
Even while all TDM actions, including as copying, transforming, masking, securing, cloning, and refreshing, can be developed internally using scripts, consider automating them to avoid human errors.
The first step toward improving your organization's efficiency, quality, security, and cost savings is to create a compelling business case and gain clearance to proceed with a TDM investment.
Conclusion:
For complex commercial applications, we've implemented reliable test data management practises at OpenTeQ. With over 200 professionals in the Data Governance practice, we have aided businesses in developing solutions for centralised data governance, automated data administration, data analysis and identification, and high availability of test data. Our custom accelerators also assist with the generation of synthetic test data, data optimization, and Software quality assurance tests for a variety of platforms. The Data Governance experts have vast experience with IBM Optim, GridTools, DataMaker, QuerySurge, and other technologies. They include Certified DBAs, SQL & Data Modeling experts.
 
Using accurate test data, institutionalising the test data management process, implementing test data creation and simulation, data masking, data quality management, data subset, data archiving, automating test data management systems, and protecting data sensitivity are just a few of the ways OpenTeQ's extensive data consulting expertise can help you improve test effectiveness.
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