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Quality in enterprise applications tends to be measured by what’s not there: defects. Decrease the bugs in an application and you’ve upped the quality, right? Sure. But that doesn’t mean you have a high-quality application.
Real quality isn’t measured only by low defect counts – it’s measured by how effectively an application meets the original business objectives that inspired its creation in the first place. And that task is getting harder.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 technologies might enable elegant-looking and simple-to-use applications, but they introduce IT complexity on the back end. For example, a Web 2.0 technology may allow thousands of simultaneous end-user transactions, a load that requires servers to continuously update data without the refresh lag-time of traditional Web applications.
Additionally, SOA and Web 2.0 technologies often introduce new security vulnerabilities to a Web application’s front end. So while the code itself may be defect free, there may be holes through which hackers can access private data. Today, it’s not enough to screen for bugs. You need to make sure your applications work well in three areas.
The three pillars of quality
To achieve quality measured by excellence – quality that contributes to the bottom line – think beyond bugs. Start with these three foundational pillars.
- Function: Much can change over the course of an application’s concept, design and release phases. Periodically revisit the application’s original requirements and measure progress against them. Test often to make sure the application functions as originally intended.
- Performance: It does no good to have an error-free application if it performs so slowly that users can’t work productively or customers abandon your Web site. Rigorously test your application to prepare it for real-world load conditions.
- Security: Does the application have hidden security vulnerabilities? Enterprises have become adept at protecting networks, leading hackers to target IT’s softer underbelly: Web applications. Don’t overlook security testing when developing Web applications.
Build on the pillars
Unlike quality assurance in traditional application development, quality management of Web applications doesn’t stop after they go live. An application that performed beautifully in a test environment – even under heavy workload simulations – might require additional tweaking once it’s live and in production.
- Does the application effectively serve your business objectives?
Consider the application’s original business objectives – increase revenue, decrease abandonment, lower customer acquisition costs – and measure its performance against them.
- Are your customers having positive and fruitful interactions with the application?
Careful examination of how your customers use an application may reveal the need to not only tweak it, but rethink its purpose entirely.
- Can you respond quickly when objectives change?
A dynamic marketplace requires flexibility in enterprise applications. When the business approaches your team with a new request, you need to quickly develop, test and launch a new process or application.
Make quality management more manageable
HP offers software to help your applications teams meet not only functional, performance and security objectives, but also a higher purpose: to create and achieve business objectives.
HP Quality Center, HP Performance Center and HP Application Security Center can help you plan an end-to-end quality lifecycle for your enterprise applications, rather than testing only after development is complete. Additionally, risk-based testing can save you time by letting you prioritise tests that are most meaningful to the business. You can track test coverage from the “top down” – from business requirements to functional requirements to defects – or from the “bottom up” – from a defect to all of the business requirements it affects.
“At Starwood Hotels and Resorts, with thousands of people accessing our reservation systems simultaneously throughout the day across the globe, it is critical for our IT organisation to make sure that the applications we put into production work and work well,” says Dave Harrison, director of IT software quality assurance for Starwood Hotels and Resorts. “We’re constantly aware of the need for the business to be agile, and HP Quality Center and HP LoadRunner help us respond quickly to requests to enhance the business through technology solutions.”1
The line between IT and the business is blurring and the two organisations’ once separate goals are now inextricably linked. As a result, IT departments need tools that link IT infrastructure and applications to business services and performance –from critical development and testing phases through deployment and operations. HP software helps enterprises look beyond defects to achieve a more complete view of quality management.
(1)HP News advisory, June 18, 2007 |
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