# Infosys Whitepaper 
Title: QA Strategy to Succeed in the Digital Age 
Author: Infosys Limited 
Format: PDF 1.7 

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 VIEW POINT QA STRATEGY TO SUCCEED IN THE  DIGITAL AGE 

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 “Digital” is the new buzzword for  organizations.  Across industries,  organizations are at various stages of their  digital transformation journeys. For some,  this might mean reimagining their entire  businesses around digital technologies;  and for others, incorporating aspects of  digital into their existing ways of working.<|endoftext|>Examples of this are abundant across  industries. In retail, the margin between  online and offline is blurring. Retailers  are incorporating technologies such as  augmented reality, beacons to provide  interactive in-store experiences to users.  Targeted campaigns are being delivered  to customers based on their proximity  to a store. On one hand, customers have  the option to order online and pick up  in-store; and on the other, they can pay  in-store and have it delivered at home.  In  the insurance industry, companies are  enabling customers to purchase insurance  anytime, anywhere, using pre-populated  information from their Facebook profiles.<|endoftext|>What this means is that IT is now at the  forefront of business transformation.  Technology is the driver for business  improvements and hence, IT departments  have a greater role to play in business  success. Consequently, the stakes are  higher than ever, for IT to deliver better  value, faster and more efficiently.<|endoftext|>However, the path to a successful digital  transformation is wrought with multiple  challenges, of which, a key challenge is  one that is inherent to the most important  aspect of digital transformations – the  changing nature of customer interactions.  While the digital revolution brings to  organizations, newer models and channels  of interaction with customers, the success  of businesses is also becoming increasingly  dependent on the quality of these  interactions. The end customer experience  is now the single most important factor in  a business’ success. Customers today are  more demanding, and much more likely to  switch loyalties if the customer experience  is not up to their expectations. Thus, the  most important factor for success of digital  transformations is ensuring a superlative  end customer experience through the  quality assurance function.<|endoftext|>However, can traditional testing  organizations that follow age-old ways,  be able to provide quality assurance in  the new scheme of things? To answer this,  let us look at some of the imperatives of  digital assurance.<|endoftext|>Focus on Customer  Experience As discussed already, the nature of  customer interactions has undergone a  great transformation in the recent past.  Businesses are increasingly engaging with  customers through a multitude of channels  such as web, mobile, and social media,  in addition to the existing traditional  channels. A single customer transaction  can now span across multiple online  and offline channels. Hence, customer  experience across each of these channels is  important; but so is providing similar and  seamless experiences across all channels,  as well as maintaining consistency in  messaging all throughout.  This also  requires a change in the approach to  quality assurance. QA needs to shift focus  from the traditional functional validation,  to more of customer experience validation,  across the digital landscape. This requires  a 360° view of quality, encompassing  functional and non-functional aspects, and  cutting across channels and technologies.  The anytime-anywhere nature of customer  transactions pose challenges in all aspects  of testing. With the increase in online  transactions, usage of cloud infrastructure,  the multitude of interconnected  applications and devices, and the advent  of big data analytics, there are newer  challenges to application security and  data privacy. Ensuring the security of  applications from any breaches, along with  adherence to security and data privacy  guidelines is essential for ensuring a  good customer experience, and business  continuity. Comprehensive security  assurance is thus a key component of  digital assurance.  Application performance is another key  determinant of success. Users are much  more likely to uninstall an app or abandon  an online transaction with the slightest  of reductions in application performance.  Unlike traditional QA, performance  evaluation needs to be incorporated at  all stages of the application development  lifecycle.  Performance evaluation needs  to be augmented with performance  monitoring in production to ensure  availability of business critical applications.  Strategies for compatibility, usability,  and accessibility testing should also be  optimized to cover multiple customer  touch points and technologies like  desktop, mobile, and other connected  devices.  There is also an increasing focus on  providing personalized experiences to  customers. In addition to functional  validation, personalized content validation  across channels, and validation of digital  content and assets also needs to be  incorporated.  Another aspect of the digital world is the  constant customer feedback and inputs,  which have become important drivers  for business decisions. Companies are  co-creating products with customers, or  using customer inputs to improve existing  products. This is also now extending  to using customer inputs to improve IT  platforms and services. In this constantly  evolving landscape, a continuous feedback  mechanism is also important for QA  organizations to understand the end  customer requirements and preempt  customer issues.  End customer feedback,  learnings from production,  and findings  from previous testing cycles can all serve  as inputs to continuously improve testing  effectiveness and efficiency, and provide a  truly 360° view of application quality.  External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited 

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 Manage Complexity An important challenge that digital  transformation brings about it is the  increasing complexity of the application  landscape. The IT landscape now needs  to support multiple newer applications  built on disparate technologies. The  interconnectedness of applications, as  well as the requirement to test them on  different device configurations, pose  {{ img-description : a group of people sitting around a table working with a laptop, in the style of light teal and crimson, uniformly staged images, light gray and navy, iso 200, yankeecore, focus on joints/connections, gravure printing  }} Increase Agility With the digital revolution, newer  technologies are being adopted at a much  faster pace. Organizations are now trying  to pilot newer and sometimes unproven  technologies, in a bid to enhance their  business. For QA teams to support this  effectively, they have to be extremely  nimble and quick to learn. Teams should  be tuned-in on technological changes,  be able to innovate quickly, and come up  with optimal solutions for new testing  challenges.  In general, development cycles are getting  progressively shorter, with businesses  vying to provide better features, faster.  Development methodologies are moving  to Agile, and DevOps. Consequently, there  is an increasing pressure on QA teams to  reduce the turnaround time and deliver  the code to production. It also has to be  balanced with the requirement to support  more and more devices and platforms.  This needs a two-pronged approach to  optimize testing requirements, as well as  increase the speed of testing. With limited  time to test, it is crucial to adopt methods  to optimize testing requirements, so that  the time is well spent on validating critical  functionalities.  While automation has been the key enabler  to increase testing effectiveness, it should  not be limited to test execution alone. It  should also encompass the entire testing  lifecycle – from requirements analysis to  reporting. Efficiencies need to be built  into the testing process by a combination  of tools, accelerators, and reusable test  artifacts. Early automation strategies  can be deployed to ensure availability of  automated test scripts for system testing.  To conclude, an assurance strategy in the  digital world has to address the following: • Focus on customer experience, rather  than functional validation • Provide a 360° assurance, encompassing  different aspects of testing as well as  end-to-end validation • Focus on continuous learning and  innovation • Continuously optimize and accelerate  testing additional challenges for the QA teams.  On one hand, assurance needs to be  provided for all application layers, from the  database, to the UI, to isolate issues; and  on the other hand, end-to-end business  process assurance encompassing multiple  applications is equally crucial. The testing  strategy should be able to balance these  requirements and provide optimal test  coverage, ensuring early isolation of  issues.  A well planned approach involving  service virtualization, judicious mix of  automation tools, test data management  and optimized testing scope should be  implemented.<|endoftext|>Thus, the need of the hour is a holistic  assurance strategy encompassing all  aspects of validation, which is also 	 optimized for the changing application  landscape.<|endoftext|>External Document © 2018 Infosys Limited 

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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. Infos