Blog post series about testing development projects, part 5/11
Articles about planning software testing and managing it.
Point of views:
- Business critical development projects, where IT plays a strong role.
- One or more outside vendors.
- Client’s business personnel as testers. They are business professionals, not software testing professionals.
- Goals for testing:
- Make sure that the implemented solution supports the needs of the business.
- Make sure the implementation doesn’t endanger the business.
Make sure the deployment doesn’t endanger the business.
From those goals for testing mentioned above, the second part (2. Make sure the deployment doesn’t endanger the business) is usually only tested from a point of view where the solution is already in production. Often the cutover itself, is not tested. There is some technical testing done considering migrations and integrations. But from the business point of view the cutover testing is not often written in the testing plan.
Cutover simulation
Cutover simulation is a good way to ensure cutover success. The method is simple, but effective.
- Plan the cutover from the business point of view.
- Plan the cutover technically.
- Simulate the cutover for the beginning of acceptance testing.
In the cutover simulation, all the cutover tasks are set in the acceptance testing environment. Found observations are either defects or change requests for the cutover plan. Now is also a good time to mark down the time spent on the tasks. This is how the schedule for the cutover plan is tested, and to see how long the downtime is.
For example:
Solution is to be deployed during the weekend. Cutover starts Friday and production use begins Monday. It is planned, that the cutover simulation is done as follows:
- Preparations are done on Wednesday
- Tasks planned for Friday, are simulated on Thursday
- Tasks planned for Saturday and Sunday, are simulated on Friday
- Cutover is validated on Monday morning
- Go/NoGO decision on Monday
If there are serious problems found in the cutover simulation, the start of the acceptance testing should be re-evaluated.
The benefits of cutover simulation
- Cutover simulation is a method to evaluate business risks before deployment
- In addition to technical testing, it’s a good way to evaluate user’s abilities to use the system
- Based on the observations found in the simulation, the quality of the deployment can be improved
- Testing quality is improved when acceptance testing is planned diligently. Systematic planning ensures no time is wasted and efforts are concentrated on finding critical defects.
Why cutover simulation is rarely used as a method
- Usually the cutover plan is made too late, with no time to simulate it.
- There are easier ways to plan a cutover, than making a huge spreadsheet. Easy-to-use-tools to plan and manage the cutover, do exist. With the right methods, the cutover simulation is possible to create based on cutover plans. And it can be quite easy
- The structure of development, testing and production environments isn’t always suited for cutover simulation. Quite often there are inexpensive solutions for this.
- And then there is that same old reason as always: Hurry, everything’s late.
