December 12, 2008, 4:21 AM — Organizations use IT for service enablement and IT has proven itself to be essential to provide the levels of service that customers demand. Implemented well, the operating costs of IT systems provide many opportunities to serve customers’ needs and provide operating margins commensurate with the profitability demanded by the organization’s stakeholders. And for the IT to accomplish these demands, it has to tune to SOA, an IT implementation strategy.
SOA, with all its benefits, carries certain risks and issues while embarking on re-engineering its IT strategy, and project delivery mechanisms. To rein in these risks and issues, QA and testing function must stand as the gatekeeper into IT operations. Quality objectives must be set corporately and adhered to, as poorly operating services risk would bring the entire organization to its knees.
Certain testing strategies are:
- Applying testing centre of excellence concept, so that there is a single repository of requirements, specifications, tools and test assets to understand and test the entire enterprise’s SOA services and supporting infrastructure.
- Perform a full traceability of the testing back from the user interface through to code level unit testing. Integrated test management, planning and execution allows SOA implementers to have confidence that a defect found at any stage in the development and deployment can be quickly identified, analyzed and resolved.
- Conducting performance test, security testing and Models Driven Testing are few such important testing strategies, which the SOA implementers should pay particular attention to.
Hence, by implementing modern QA and testing best practice and insisting on high quality delivery can an organization be fully prepared to meet the challenges of SOA implementation, and when the challenges are met, there is every chance of reaping the expected the rewards.
Read the complete white paper Ensuring Service Enablement from SOA.
