English | EN MULTI-DOMAIN OPERATIONS U0026AMP; CROSS-DOMAIN INFORMATION FLOW
July 9, 2019
It is amazing if you
think where we have got to in technology over the last few decades, so too in
testing. When I started testing in the previous century it was all about
squashing bugs during different types of test phases. Traditionally we worked
in different phases of testing. Some of that is still the case but testing is
now working a lot closer
together with
development and also with requirements.
There was even a movement born out of it… Agile, you might have heard of it,
or to be honest different degrees of Agile. I can hear the purist say that
there is either Agile or not Agile, but I think there are different degrees of
applying Agile. Then again if you are not going fully into Agile you are missing
out, but at the same time, Agile is not for every organisation/ project.
Over the last few years,
we have moved on or taken a different direction when Req-Dev-Test started
working with Ops too. Indeed that is DevOps, you guessed it. It is good to see
that teams become more autonomous in DevOps to allow them to get a faster
throughput from the requirement to production. Unfortunately, we do tend to often
ignore or leave out other domains and let them do their own bits. We should
include those too to allow closer cooperations and aim for a truly joint up
approach. And before we get other new concatenations (DevSecOps I have
heard) we simply refer to this as “multi-domain operations”.
To make multi-domain
operations work well, it is critical to share information from each of the
domains with one and another. This will allow each domain to learn from each
other to improve the way they are working and also important to potentially
foresee issues in other domains and perform corrective measures to avoid these
issues from appearing. The result from a testers point of view is that
we (and other domains themselves) can find bugs earlier but also finding them
using different methods and providing expertise for those domain themselves to
find bugs so that the overall quality of the program is drastically improved.
It is the cross-domain flow of information that enables that increase in
overall quality. At Sogeti we are calling this NextGenQA where QA is looking
for the next generation of quality assurance where we actively work together
across multiple domains and use technology to our advantage.
In NextGenQA, we are
enabling different information sources to exchange information even if the tools
are incapable of working together. We will use existing APIs or build our own
and even utilise RPA (Robotic Process Automation) ourselves to allow
information to be more freely shared and build dashboard and documents. Within
development projects we use automation widely, nightly builds, running unit
tests, functional test automation, data extracts, or even environment builds,
but so far other repetitive project tasks are still left to manual
interactions. There are now so many RPA tools in the market that
there is a tool for almost any occasion (please do use common sense though!!).
As soon as there is
enough information available we even incorporate our CognitiveQA solution which will help determine effective test execution and
predict where defects might appear and therefore allow focused and targeted
specific test suites. NextGenQA is all about automation on many different
levels and the exchange of information to allow project-wide informed
decisions.
The ability for one
domain to say that new functionality is being considered or that a particular
functionality has been difficult to achieve will alert others to move effort so
they can be prepared when they get to deal with that new functionality/requirement.
Every domain still has
its own goals but by working closely together those goals will amalgamate into
the overall project goal of delivering the project on time with the expected
quality and for the right price. That is a win for all those involved in the
project and those benefiting from the project outcomes.
If this seems something for the far future, think again. I came across this video from Destin of SmartEveryDay (who got a pretty cool job!) when he got to interview the US military on multi-domain operations… Fascinating. This shows coordinated multi-domain operations are very much the here and now, and we know that a lot of these types of development have roots in the military which have a subsequent impact in the civil society. And while cross-domain information flow is happening within organisations it is not across all domains and not always shared/used but all domains. NextGenQA incorporates this all and will allow organisations to achieve new levels of efficiencies in timelines, budgets, and quality.
Video Courtesy: Destin of SmartEveryDay
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