100% Automation of Mass Changes Enables New Test Strategies (Rüdiger Schilling)

How can you lower the error ration for mass changes? Under which conditions and how far? How can you deduce the risks for the productive systems? What are reasonable organisation strategies?

In large change projects testing is one of the biggest cost increasers. Mass changes at productive applications are necessary for migrations, the fulfilment of legal requirements, architecture consolidation, modernization and for specific extensions like UNICODE and many other projects. These mass changes have different requirements on tools and proceedings than "normal" development projects. Outsourcing as well as the development of your own tools could spare a part of the cost for the changes. However, both approaches do not help to take the biggest hurdles - the test.

But, automating the changes completely - 100% - enables you to slash the error rates (down to nearly 0). The fully automated implementation of the changes opens up new possibilities for the project organization, that drastically reduces the test efforts and risks of such projects.

Note: This article was originally published in German. We will be posting the English translation shortly, so check back soon. Thanks!

OBJEKTspektrum Special Edition Testing 2009

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