IBS Journal August 2016


27


the one-point agenda was: can the product deal with the peak load of people accessing it?”


Today, this process is much more complicated, because part of the system will be in the cloud and the other part on premises. “The integration has to be tested and at varying loads. On top of this, you also have to ensure the system in the cloud is tested for security.”


Consolidation


Banks tend to use commercial off the shelf products, and this involves a number of parties in the lifecycle. It often results in conflict over the product’s features and how usable it is. Making things worse, product companies are incentivised to get the solution into production quickly. This means the process can be rushed and problems can arise at a later time. With this in mind, banks are starting to consolidate the number of vendors they use, says Thulluri. “Banks often realise that larger IT firms are taking them for a ride and they can do it more cost effectively. One thing I have seen consistently across banks is they don’t have an appropriate strategy based on what people are accountable for. This is often lacking in testing strategies and is not written into vendor contracts.”


It is generally advised to use an independent company to provide QA. This is because external firms offer specific skills banks don’t have in-house. And when financial organisations choose to do testing in-house, the cost can be high, according to Chhabra. “Testing is becoming so technology intensive. In-house teams aren’t skilled and don’t know how to deal with situations…Customer experience is at stake and if you try to invest in testing without looking at tools or automation, then you aren’t approaching it in the right way. If you want to have the best quality, you need to have a process driving this.”


Chhabra’s colleague Vivek Agarwal, Global Head for Enterprise Vertical Solutions, Tech Mahindra adds: “The financial services industry is an early adopter of technology and with so much disruption, it means a lot of the conventional institutions have to adapt to the challenge.”


So what is the best strategy for banks? Financial www.ibsintelligence.com


firms need to weigh up the criticality of risks within an individual app or set of apps, Chhabra argues. “Organisations we see start the strategy with a portfolio analysis. The bottomline is business critical applications, then define a strategy for each product in the portfolio.”


There is much complexity around testing today, but the biggest industry challenge is finding the right balance between how much QA is enough and the benchmarking of this. “People in the IT organisation have extreme views. Someone will want to focus on automation and then another person might say, ‘we don’t need testing’.”


With this in mind: “It is about balancing those extreme views, creating a benchmark and looking at the entire portfolio: What is critical, what is not so critical and then putting the strategy in place. Once everyone is aligned and leadership is on the same page, it is easier to select the right tools and processes.”


Advances in technology are leading to QA services in many forms. As part of its portfolio, Capgemini offers consultancy and managed services as well as specialist automated testing. Meanwhile, Infosys offers a QA validation framework for customers as well as what it calls ‘digital assurance’. According to Malhotra: “This is everything to do with the way we go digital – from the time you set up your sprint to validating before it goes live…We used to measure value in each of those steps before the full product was validated at the time of UAT. Now you don’t QA the value added product; it’s the entire solution.”


QA is changing and this will continue as new technology emerges. So what will the future of testing look like? Experts agree that machine learning will be key, and this will eventually lead to programmes being able to make ‘smart decisions’ – an area known as AI. The ultimate result will be better products, with less defects – at least that is what the QA vendors are hoping for. Prabakaran Karuppiah, Practice Head and VP, Capgemini believes quality will be improved in the future with design and functional automation. “Once we get the models in place, a 200-page requirement will be programmed into a system in one shot.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52