Testing is one of the main vital aspects of a software development life cycle to offer the finest and highly-functional software end product to the users. It also requires a proper and highly efficient testing strategy in place. There are many components of the testing strategy and test data management is one of them. In this post, we will discuss everything that you need to know about TDM.
First of all, let’s understand what test data management is.
Test Data Management is the process of data management to fulfill all the needs of automated tests that don’t require any human intervention. An ideal test data management strategy creates the required test data as per the needs of the tests. It also ensures that the test data is of good quality as poor data might not generate trustworthy results.
Another aspect of TDM is to ensure the availability of the test data. What is the use of having realistic data when it is not available when we need it the most? So, there are three major roles of test data management: providing test data that is of high-quality, realistic, and available.
What is the importance of test data management?
The need for quality data
No matter how talented a performer is, a bad script can ruin the entire movie. Similarly, no matter how great your testing strategy is when you feed it with bad data, you are going to get bad results only. The test data quality is very vital to get effective results. All your efforts and money will go in vain if you don’t have the quality test data.
The need for availability of data
Now, let’s discuss the example we have discussed above. You have the finest script, but you don’t have a performer available for you. What to do in that case? Another important role of TDM is to ensure that the test data is available as and when test cases ask for. You need to have high-quality data available to you when you need it.
Data Regulations
After the GDPR implementation, the need to protect and use sensitive data of the users has been the buzzword across the globe. You have to ensure that you don’t use any sensitive data of users, but you also need to protect the data from possible threats and cyber breaches. Sensitive data exposure might lead to not just financial casualties, but also it damages your brand reputation.
Every country has its own set of data regulation policies that you need to follow strictly. You need to develop a data regulation policy that ensures data compliance.
You Want to Find Bugs as Early as Possible
As early as you identify bugs, there are better chances of fixing them. A small bug that is found at the later stage of the process might turn out costly. The best test data management process ensures that the automated testing process runs smoothly and identifying all bugs in the initial stage of the development process.
What does the TDM process look like?
There are a total of 5 phases of the TDM process:
Planning
Here, a core planning must be done by data requirements and appointing a test data manager. Then the test data manager will prepare all required documentation with the list of tests. Also, at the planning stage, a proper team must be formed.
Analysis
The second stage is the analysis. During this stage, consolidation and collection of data requirements are done. Also, data backup access and storage policies must be defined here.
Design
Now is the time to decide the strategy for data preparation. Now, you need to identify data sources and providers. This is the final stage before the TDM strategy implementation.
Build
Here, the test data management process is finally implemented and all the plans are executed. The data masking is done and data is backed up too.
Maintenance
Maintenance is the last and longest phase of all where you need to ensure that everything runs smoothly and maintained perfectly. From troubleshooting and fixing problems to updating existing test data or adding new data also comes in this maintenance phase.
