The specific challenges for the Telecommunications software testing community have their basis in the complexity and diversity within the Operational Support Systems (OSS) Architecture and the associated commercial and financial pressures that exist to ensure first to market products.
The Telcos (large telecommunications service providers) are moving towards a standardised Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) that has an emphasis on reusability and common capabilities in order to deliver consistent customer experience. These architectures will support the full range of business activities including Customer Care, Billing and Order Processing; Service Execution Management; Resource Management; Portfolio Management; Enterprise Information Management; Collaborations (with Customers, Users, Employees, Partners and Suppliers).
A Telecoms tester must also possess skills and experience beyond the generic ability to write and execute tests. This is because of the varied range of functional areas that telecoms software testing encompasses:- Technical Domain and Network Access areas
- Billing and payment processing
- Collaborations between telecoms service providers
- Customer Relation Management (CRM
There is also a need to have the relevant expertise to facilitate testing across the products and services offerings, for example:
- Mobile applications
- Broadband and internet applications
- IPTV (Internet TV)
- VOIP applications.
However, a single software tester can't be expected to possess the experience to cover all of these areas and functions. The tester must communicate effectively as it is imperative that they can converse throughout the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), with Business Analysts (BA), Designers, Developers, Third party supplies, Customers and End users throughout the different test phases such as customer acceptance testing and system integration testing.
There is also the issue of data to consider. This may result in the tester selecting or creating data for tests. Or in the case of the introduction of new platforms and data structures, there a need for data migration activities to take place, this means that the tester needs to have the capacity to understand and verify the transformed or migrated data.
And there are other trends which are also having a bearing on the future of testing software in Telecoms:
Agile Testing: Until recently the principal approach to software testing was the Waterfall or V model, Due to the scale of many projects it was not uncommon for the need for a specific product or the technology to be rendered obsolete before it was delivered. This lead to increased interest in Agile methodologies, including agile software testing, in an attempt to meet the demand for faster time to market. This change in itself has brought its own challenges in terms of managing the array of smaller agile projects and ensuring change control across the varied components, computer systems and telecom platforms.
Outsourced QA and testing: In recent years it has become popular for testing to be outsourced to offshore test factories with the aim of reduced cost and delivery timescales. The test factories provide automated regression test services which constantly run on the test environments to identify if any errors have been introduced as a result of recently delivered code.
Testing Environments: These can be complex and expensive to establish and maintain, it is common for environments to be shared by many systems and integration test teams, however this can produce a configuration management headache.
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An long-standing question in the software development world is: what is the correct ratio of testers to developers? A recent thread on the Scrum Development list asked how agile impacts this ratio. The answer to the first question seems to be 'It depends'. The answer to the second question, according to Elisabeth Hendrickson, is that agile teams can do more testing, with fewer testers.
For the full article visit Info Q
Agile testing software development
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We recently surveyed 224 IT professionals and asked them about their company's interest in a tool that could be used to test application performance throughout the application lifecycle - from application design through ongoing management. Roughly three quarters of the survey respondents indicated that, "If the tool worked well it would make a significant improvement to our ability to manage application performance." To dig deeper into this issue, we spoke with a consultant who is responsible for application testing at a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company. Since one of the reasons why applications run well over a LAN and run poorly over the WAN is the use of chatty protocols, we asked The consultant if his company ever deploys chatty applications. The Consultant said that his company often deployed chatty applications and that in some instances the problem is so bad that "the application just can not be deployed." He added that in many cases there is not an easy way to improve application performance and that "there is just so much that you can do with caching." The discussion of chatty protocols demonstrates the need to be aware of the impact of the WAN on application performance during the application development lifecycle. In particular, it is important during application development to identify and eliminate any factor that could have a negative impact on application performance.
We asked an IT professional who is the manager of technology, architecture and engineering for a large international law firm for his opinion on this. He highlighted the importance of this approach when he stated, "It is much better to plan for the performance of an application during development than to scramble around after we develop it."
For the full article go to Network World
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Canadian MR data collection firm Itracks has launched iMarkIt, a tool that enables survey participants to mark up video, web sites, images and text; allowing researchers to show their clients key findings containing visuals created by the respondents themselves.
The firm says that its new tool is perfect for concept and advertising testing, web site testing and feedback, copy testing and logo development.
‘iMarkIt integrates with the firm’s online focus group and bulletin board facilities, as well as with its online surveys. Stimuli are displayed and respondents can drag and drop elements and text boxes on top of the image. They can also demonstrate their preferences by adding smiley or frowning face icons, or by using arrows to point to specific areas of interest. Throughout the process, respondents have the facility to add text to explain their rationale.
For full article visit Mrweb
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From Yahoo
The Phoenix airport has become the first in the United States to test new X-ray technology that can see through people's clothes and show the body's contours with blush-inducing clarity.
Critics have said the high-resolution images created by the "backscatter" technology are too invasive. But the Transportation Security Administration adjusted the equipment so the pictures can be blurred in certain areas while still detecting concealed weapons. During the testing, the machine will be used only as a back-up screening measure. Passengers who fail the standard screening with a metal detector will be able to choose between the new device or a pat-down search. Passengers selected for screening by the device are asked to stand in front of the closet-size X-ray unit with the palms of their hands facing out. Then they must turn around for a second screening from behind. The testing procedure takes about a minute.
Risk based testing
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