QA Consulting for a Global Provider of Security Audit and Compliance Services

Summary

A global provider of security audit and compliance software was acquired by a major enterprise software vendor and had to migrate its product's database to comply with the new environment, all under a tight deadline. INNERLUXES served as QA consultant, devising and implementing a test-optimization strategy that confirmed the migrated product kept its full functionality. The strategy cut about a quarter of the testing time, organized distributed teams to remove communication gaps, and ended with training materials that let a new testing team take over smoothly.

About the Customer

The Customer is a trusted international provider of security audit and compliance services. Its product helps organizations establish security audit and compliance reporting based on log data, and monitor change-management procedures, acceptable-use policies, and user authorization processes.

A Database Migration That Had to Preserve Full Functionality on a Tight Deadline

After the Customer was acquired by a major enterprise software vendor, its product had to be migrated from the Oracle database engine to IBM Db2 to comply with the standards of the new environment. INNERLUXES was chosen as QA consultant to develop and implement a test-optimization strategy that would ensure the updated product retained all of its previous functionality. The main challenge was to optimize the testing process and meet a tight project deadline; an additional challenge was tuning communication for the distributed testing teams involved in the project.

A Test-Optimization Strategy Built for Speed and Distributed Teams

After analyzing the project's requirements, INNERLUXES's QA consultants worked out a strategy to speed up the testing process, proposing the following measures to optimize testing time and effort:

• Shared test environments — test engineers combined their tests to use the same environment and test data, so the output of some tests could serve as the input for others.
• Higher-coverage tests — certain tests were designed to cover more functionality for the same effort, saving about 25% of testing time.
• Reuse of migration tests — data migration testing was conducted in PL/SQL using tests previously created in the Oracle environment, so the team could focus on testing without first having to study the product's functionality.
• Automated regression — regression testing was automated and run with previously created and proofed test cases wherever possible.

INNERLUXES also provided a risk analysis of the testing strategy, prioritizing test scenarios across platforms such as Windows, Linux, and AIX so the most important tests would be handled first if any problems arose with the strategy. The testing scope was split into modules, each assigned to a dedicated team, which avoided communication gaps for the teams located in Europe and Asia and reduced the communication budget.

Beyond strategy, INNERLUXES rendered testing services and reviewed the solution's performance using a performance measurement model, then provided the Customer with a detailed test summary report on the identified issues together with recommendations on how to mitigate them. Finally, on the basis of the created and implemented strategy, INNERLUXES produced training materials on the testing process for a new testing team that would take over the project, helping that team get up to speed quickly.

An Effective Strategy Delivered Without Delays

• The Customer gained an effective strategy to test multiple aspects of the solution within a tight project deadline and to confirm that the updated solution complied with the new environment.
• The updated solution was tested without any delays.
• The Customer received a detailed test summary report, including recommendations on how to address the revealed defects.
• Training materials ensured quick onboarding of the new testing team taking over the project.

Technologies and Tools

Oracle Database, IBM Db2, PL/SQL; tested across Windows, Linux, and AIX platforms.