So how it is testing SaaS, is it different from on-premises?
Software as a Service, which is otherwise called SaaS, is still in demand and it will continue evolving because of the business benefits it offers. Business benefits differ with the business models you adopt alongside technology; SaaS is also a business model alongside technology, helping in reducing the cost of managing infrastructure for your application.
In this agile world, where only change is consistent businesses must be agile in adopting the change in order to be ahead in the curve. So, businesses should have ever evolving applications where updates to their applications should roll out constantly with existing bug fixing process. SaaS provides that leverage for frequent updates.
SaaS testing demands comprehensive test plan
SaaS testing emphasizes on testing only application as it lacks some specific aspects which prevail in on-premises. Defined QA plan becomes important due to the frequent releases and quick bug fixing process, and defined QA plan brings the track of software development teams and testing teams’ activities when documented and organized.
QA plan must be comprehensive, no matter what types of testing are deployed, it should talk about the scope, elements to be tested, tools used and the level of testing should be done for each SaaS component and application feature. The quality of an application release improves with a properly defined QA plan and when all users follow it to the fullest. Hence, the chances of perplexity along with the failure in releases diminish within the development team.
Is there an Increase in Test Effort when compared to on-Premises?
In a SaaS development cycle, development is quicker and compressed, thus it pushes the importance of testing to high and at the same time it also increases the test effort. Frequent software releases demand testing at a rapid pace, making testing cycles shorter and continuous – it could be weekly, daily or even hourly. Besides this, SaaS testing includes both functional and non-functional testing and it also involves testing on cloud infrastructure with the cloud components.
Doing business logic testing, compatibility testing, data privacy and data integrity testing, interoperability testing, performance testing, and security testing is also essential as part of SaaS testing depending upon the requirements.
Reaching Customers at the Earliest is the need of the hour
Whenever customers find an issue accessing an application, they expect it to be fixed a couple of hours of their return. So, agile methods add value to SaaS testing to increase the speed of application delivery by fixing existing bugs. Achieving faster time to market is the ultimate goal and for that to happen, creating regression suites with the use of automation testing tools help in validating the impact of patches, upgrades and bug fixes. Maintaining shorter test cycles that are automated increases the pace of testing and it empowers in reaching customers at the earliest.
“The automation of regression testing —a real killer when it comes to SaaS”
SaaS caused the need to consider customer experience as a whole not just functionality
In this highly competitive world, how successful SaaS platform will be – is based on both – user experience as well as overall customer experience. So, the question raises – what is user experience and what is customer experience?
User experience is all about an application’s user experience while on the application, it covers user navigation, intuitiveness in using the application and feasibility in availing the features. Customer experience is overall experience of a customer doing business transactions, testing customer experience is not about testing one or two transactions and concluding the findings rather it involves testing consistency, testing from different geographies and testing different customer touchpoints.
Making it clear, customer experience testing as it named, it completely focuses on customer, customer transactions and all customer touchpoints leveraging the actual customer behavior.
“Concluding, compared to on-premises, functional testing is just a part in SaaS testing, it demands to consider user experience and customer experience as a whole”
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Contact Details:
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Venkatesh Akula | ClicQA
Email Id: venkateshakula@clicqa.com
https://www.clicqa.com/