# Infosys Whitepaper 
Title: Do more with less in software testing 
Author: Infosys Limited 
Format: PDF 1.6 

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 WHITE PAPER DO MORE WITH LESS IN SOFTWARE  TESTING Abstract Faced with pressure to deliver more despite ever-shrinking  budgets and shorter timelines, most companies struggle to  balance the cost of innovation with business demands. Testing  is a critical area where neither speed nor quality of output can  be compromised as this leads to negative business impact. This  paper explains some cost-effective strategies that enable testing  organizations to improve efficiency within their testing teams  while ensuring high-quality output.<|endoftext|>Indumathi Devi 

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 External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited Introduction  Even as the demands for agile software  increase exponentially, testing budgets  continue to shrink. Software testing  teams within most organizations struggle  to deliver quality software in shorter  timelines and tighter budgets. Further,  most software tests tend to reside in  silos making integration, collaboration  and automation challenging. Thus,  organizations need innovative testing  solutions and strategies to balance quality,  speed and cost.  

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 External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited Agile testing solutions and strategies 1. Test with an end-user  mindset  The job of testing goes beyond checking  software against preset requirements or  logging defects. It involves monitoring  how the system behaves when it is actually  being used by an end-user. A common  complaint against testers is that they do  not test software from the perspective of  business and end-users. Effective risk- based testers are those who understand  the system’s end-users and deliver value- added testing services that ensure quality  products and meet clients’ expectations.  To do this, testers must evaluate products  by undertaking real business user journeys  across the system and test commonly  used workflows in short testing windows.  By mimicking real user journeys, such  testers identify higher number of critical  production defects.<|endoftext|>2. Empower cross functional  teams   Agile and DevOps methodologies in  software testing are forcing teams to work  together across the software development  lifecycle (SDLC). Engendering test  independence is not about separating  testing from development as this can  lead to conflicts between developers  and testers. Most teams have a polarized  dynamic where testers search for defects  and must prove how the program is  erroneous while programmers defend their  code and applications. Cross-functional  teams eliminate such conflict by gathering  members with different specializations  who share accountability and work toward  common goals. For instance, ‘testers’ are  simply team members with testing as their  primary specialization and ‘programmers’  are those within the team who specialize  in coding.  This team structure encourages people  to work with a collaborative mindset and  sharpen their expertise. Such teams can be  small, with as few as 4-8 members who are  responsible for a single requirement or part  of the product backlog. Cross-functional  teams provide complete ownership and  freedom to ensure high-quality output – an  important step to realizing the potential of  agile.  3. Automate the automation  Running an entire test suite manually  is time-consuming, error-prone and,  often, impossible. While some companies  are yet to on-board agile and DevOps  capabilities, others have already integrated  the practice of continuous integration (CI)  and continuous delivery (CD) into their  testing services. Irrespective of the level of  DevOps maturity, CI/CD will provide only  limited value if not paired with the right  kind and degree of testing automation.  Thus, organizations need a robust, scalable  and maintainable test automation suite  covering the areas of unit, API, functional,  and performance testing. Automated  testing saves effort, increases accuracy,  improves test coverage, and reduces  cycle time. To ensure automation success,  organizations must focus on: •   Automating the right set of tests,  particularly business-critical end-user  journeys and frequently used workflows •   Integrating various components that  may change continuously and need to  be regressed frequently •   Automating data redundant tests •   Using the right set of automation tools  and frameworks •   Moving beyond just the user interface  and automating unit, APIs and non- functional tests •   Continuous maintenance and use of  automated test suite  On its own, test automation is important.  However, when automation is integrated  with a CI/CD pipeline to run every time  new code is pushed, the benefits in time,  cost and quality are multiplied.  

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 © 2018 Infosys Limited, Bengaluru, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys  acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this  documentation nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the  prior permission of Infosys Limited and/ or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document.  For more information, contact askus@infosys.com Infosys.com | NYSE: INFY Stay Connected Conclusion About the author In a fast-paced and evolving digital world, companies want their IT partners to do more  with less. When it comes to software testing, this places heavy pressure on software testers  who are required to push high-quality code faster at lower cost. To streamline software  testing, organizations need an approach where their testers adopt an end-user mindset by  testing real user journeys and critical business transactions. They must also create efficient  cross-functional teams that collaborate to achieve common goals and deliver value-added  testing services. Finally, automating different layers of testing and practicing CI/CD will  facilitate continuous testing and reduce time-to-market. These cost-effective strategies will  help software testing professionals improve productivity and deliver more with less.<|endoftext|>Indumathi Devi is a Project Manager at Infosys with over 15 years of experience in software testing. She has effectively executed multiple  software testing projects. Working in different domains and technology stacks, she has assisted numerous clients in implementing robust  software testing solutions for manual as well as automated testing.<|endoftext|>  


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