Best Practices for Enterprise Application Testing
Enterprise application testing is a critical aspect for ensuring that business processes run smoothly and efficiently.
The testing process becomes significantly challenging due to the complex nature of these applications, which often involve a wide range of components, such as databases, servers, operating systems, storage solutions, networking infrastructure, management tools, backup software, etc.
ERP systems are no different from other software in that testing is essential to their implementation and upkeep. In reality, rigorous testing is especially important because of the complexity of ERP systems and their significance for daily corporate operations.
Here are a few key points that highlight the best practices for ERP application testing:
1. Understand what you are testing and why
Examine your business processes and integrations in great detail to determine exactly what needs to be tested and why. Your ERP testing plan will be more precise and effective the more you know. Failing to do so may result in either under- or over-testing, putting your ERP at risk and wasting time and money.
2. All-inclusive Test Strategy
Create a thorough test plan that includes the testing approach, resources, timetable, and deliverables. Incorporate many testing methodologies, including performance, security, non-functional, and functional testing.
3. Start testing as early as possible
As early as feasible in the development life cycle, start testing. For quicker feedback, include testing in the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline.
4. Test Automation
Use test automation to conduct regression and repetitive testing. Sort test cases into automation priorities according to their criticality and frequency of execution.
5. Test data management
Make sure the test data is representative, realistic, and encompasses a range of situations. In test settings, data anonymization and masking for sensitive data.
6. Collaboration
Encourage cooperation amongst the teams working on development, testing, and operations. Make use of technology to track issues and communicate effectively.
7. Choose the best testing team
Make that your ERP testing team includes the correct mix of business leaders, developers, QA engineers, and business users, and that everyone understands their individual tasks and testing deliverables schedules.
8. Setup Testing environment
Using a test environment reduces the likelihood of mistakes occurring when the system goes live. It also provides a secure environment in which users may experiment with different configurations and settings without jeopardizing the production system.
9. Keep a record of everything
Proper documentation guarantees that nothing falls through the cracks throughout the testing process and holds all stakeholders accountable. It also serves as a learning document for future testers and helps educate individuals engaged in sensitive processes. It is advised that you employ automatic test documentation to assist eliminate human error and verify compliance.
10. Make use of test case libraries
Test case libraries provide a collection of pre-defined test cases for ERP systems, removing the requirement to write test cases from scratch. Using test case libraries rather than creating everything from scratch each time can save testing teams a significant amount of time and money.
11. Appropriate time for UAT
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is an essential component of ERP testing. During the testing phase, actual end users who use the ERP system on a daily basis check that the system functions as it should. Because many users have regular day jobs, it’s critical to allow them plenty of time to complete this testing.
12. Test for regression, functionality, and integration
It is critical to ensure that any changes you make to an ERP system do not jeopardize existing functionality or introduce new bugs. Regression testing allows for the early detection of these issues.
Functional testing ensures that individual features work as intended, whereas integration testing ensures that the various components of the ERP system communicate correctly. These three types of testing ensure that the system operates as planned and that important business processes run smoothly.
13. Select the best ERP testing tool
Yes, you guessed it! Our final best practice recommendation for ERP software testing is to employ an intelligent test automation tool such as Opkey.
Automation testing is less expensive in the long term, reduces risk more effectively, and is far faster than manual testing, allowing you to adapt to changing business needs more quickly. Contact us today to learn more about why Opkey is the market-leading ERP test automation tool.
