Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2..
Stage of Software Life Cycle
Most people are familiar with software testing activities that are done in regu-
lar software development projects. In most topics and literature, these activities
have been covered in detail. But few topics have covered testing activities per-
formed in the production environment. Internet applications need to be tested
regularly when they are in production. They have become mission-critical applica-
tions for the companies who run them. Similarly enterprise applications that are
Web based, which many users from customers and suppliers along with company
employees use to do their work, also need to be tested periodically to ensure that
users are able to use the applications and that there is no downtime due to any
hardware or software problems. This is more critical for hosted applications, as
the company who owns the hosted application earns its revenue from subscrip-
tions. They charge their users by the number of transactions performed in a week
or month. Downtime is a complete no-no for these hosted application vendors.
So they periodically check functionality and availability of their application to
users.
2.. Outsourced Software Testing
An independent software verification and validation service is a new trend that has
gained momentum over the last 10 years. Here any software application is to be
tested by a software testing service provider. It has been felt that using outsourcing
and offshoring coupled with consolidation of projects can bring about tremendous
benefits to customers. With mature models, software testing has become an inde-
pendent component in the software development which can be outsourced sepa-
rately from software development. Many software service providers have come up
with business models that drive a lot of business value to their customers.
Due to scattered team structures, vast distance between customer and service
provider locations, different cultures, and many other factors, the delivery model
has changed significantly for these projects. A detailed discussion is provided in
Chapter 11
of this topic.
2.8.1
Software Vendor Perspective
If you happen to be working for a software vendor, then you will either be testing
products of your own company or be managing service providers who are testing
products on your company's behalf. If you happen to be in the second situation,
then you will have to manage a lot of other things than technology and people.
Now you have deal with different cultures, complying with different governmental
regulations, time differences due to people located in different time zones, different
productivity, and many more hurdles.
