Efficiency Gains through Automation

Increasingly across all industries, companies are striving to achieve smarter, faster, more effective operations throughout their business. The importance of quality speed to market deliveries and reliable, timely, management information is so critical in supporting the foundations for success. A professional review of your business testing operations is an excellent way to get quality, independant support in achieving those strategic goals.

Testing support can be integrated within your business to suit your needs, costs and timescales. This can be at process mapping level; for example, looking at your procedures and at pitfalls you wish to eliminate from your business environment, or it can be at test automation level where test data and or scripts can be created and run in high volumes automatically - even over night without being attended by a member of staff.

Automation of test scripts is particularly beneficial in giving early indication of the level of quality in the delivery and can aid key decision making, which has a direct influence on the outcome for your projects. The set-up of automated testing enables concurrent processing to simulate multiple users, platforms and other important configurations. Test automation benefits include that it saves time, money and can be targeted across the most important functional areas giving you a great breadth of coverage and a level of assurance and confidence at an early stage. In addition to speed and cost benefits the re-usable aspects of automation mean that realisation of these cost benefits are utilised time and time again with minimal overhead maintenance.

MI metrics and the capturing of them is very tricky or hard to quantify as each project is different, so the real benefits are ‘value adds’, which is something many employees cannot measure either through lack of experience outside their employer or lack of training. This is where a consultancy can add value over existing staff rather than incur additional direct costs, which require extra time and money.

At nFocus we can demonstrate a wealth of experience in offering a complete testing service including areas such as planning, estimating, execution, release and post implementation. We also offer bespoke testing consultancy for those looking for specialised support in specific areas. Our extensive expertise and well qualified professionals within the team can advise and support your business on all facets of automation, performance, security, mobile and device testing in addition to manual testing practices, future proofing and scalability. This means we can save you money and that money can be reinvested within your organisation.

The impacts of not approaching testing operations correctly can cost a colossal amount, which can damage your base line profit margins and your commercial reputation. Getting the right help from the right sources at the right time is vital. It is important to engage experienced and established professionals who can demonstrate helping clientele with their testing challenges and evidence valued trusted relationships built upon the successful partnerships, whilst also saving you money and time.

Challenges and Considerations

The risk profiles of a project or programme of work constantly change over the system development life-cycle. We all know that occasionally a swerve ball is thrown and we must react and adapt accordingly. Usually the project informs testing of the change and in return testing informs the project of the associated risk and details the probability of the risk involved. Testing then needs to be flexible and responsive to these changes to adapt, and to find a suitable solution to offer the best probability of success without compromising quality.

Common Testing Methodologies Overview

Software Development and Testing can use lots of different methodologies and models, but for this paper we will stick to those that are most commonly used and current in today's market place. Overall the common goal of all testing methodologies is to ensure a bug free product that meets the Users requirements.

Key Phases of STLC

STLC - Software Testing Life Cycle, simply put, refers to a testing process regardless of which testing methodology you use (Agile, Scrum or Waterfall etc.), each process will have specific steps to be executed in a predefined sequence, thus ensuring that both the entry and exit criteria have been met through each stage of a project.


In the STLC process, every activity and testing task is carried out in a planned way, regardless of whether you are in a short sprint or a large waterfall project. Each project phase will naturally have different goals and deliverables but the principals of each objectives remains the same – delivering software that is bug-free and meets the Users requirements.

Within each project, there will be a level of detail that naturally alters dependant on the testing methodology, but the key features of the STLC will remain the same whether written into a formal document or scribbled on a post-it note. Here are the key (and not limited too) features of the STLC:

What Are the Best Practices for Release Management?

DevOps, although not a new concept, is increasing in popularity; and as its adoption rate increases across the globe there are becoming some worrying signs that although a great concept there are some shortfalls in the process. Our observations from many DevOps engagements conclude that the following are the key indicators which suggest you need to refine your release management process:

• Everyone in the DevOps team is stressed, or worse still burnt out.
• Releases mainly happen out of core hours and often on weekends and Bank Holiday.
• Your team relies on a single ‘Go To’ person, the only one who knows how to get the code deployed.
• Users are often negatively affected by new releases – bugs in live.
• You might not be superstitious, but your project manager brings into work a lucky black cat, a rabbit’s foot and hangs a horse shoe above the server room door for every software release…!

Maximising Your Results with a Digital Test Strategy

By the time you have read to the end of this article, you can be very assured that someone somewhere has either launched a new app, created a new phone, put their services into the Cloud or Internet enabled a ‘Thing’. This gives us a problem; an advancement of digital tech is forcing every company to rethink their testing strategies, leave it too late to change and you risk being left behind in the market place and that’s not a place you want to be, nor does the board and shareholders…

Customers and End Users alike want high quality applications that seamlessly integrate first time. Testing was once a project supporter, now it’s the driving force of key strategies and the way in which projects are delivered. Ask yourself the following three questions, and if you have one moment of doubt then you need to rethink the way you address this digital disruption:

Load Testing Tools Comparison: Nine Essentials Of A Load Testing Tool

With multiple Performance & Load Testing (LT) tools in the marketplace, the motivation behind this article is to highlight what the key functions that make up the ideal tool are. I will use my experience of working with open source and premium LT tools to highlight what I believe the key offerings are that makes them relevant in this competitive market. These nine essentials of a load testing tool can then be used when undertaking a load testing tools comparison. 

How to Maximize Test Automation Benefits

Adoption of new working practices and methodologies has meant that organisations are constantly challenging themselves to get products and services to market faster than ever and in doing so are now having to think very hard how this can be achieved. We all know that first to market get the spoils, so there is a lot at stake getting the delivery model right. Test Automation is just one way of speeding up your project delivery and in doing so building up a regression pack of test scripts that can be run with little effort in little time.

Unleashing the Power of a Test Plan Template

Firstly, a test plan, in simple terms, is a testing project plan for all the testing works that need to be achieved during any of the test phases; the test plan will not address test design, nor detail the low-level details of say a Test Case or Test Script. It is however vital that you have a good test plan template so that you always start right and have the required sections in the template to allow you to: 

1. Be thorough
2. Use the latest version of the document thus giving you the best opportunity to cover of all the details required for that Testing Phase.

Emerging Technologies in IoT

My 70-year young Father entered the digital world for the first time last year; he had managed to successfully swerve the internet and associated technology for most of his life, but the closure of his local bank meant he had to become a Silver Surfer and transact online. Now here’s the funny thing, having missed 20 years of painfully developed, lack lustre devices and poor internet speeds, he’s straight into augmented reality, surfing the virtual world like a 13-year-old pimply teenager. Voice browsing was his latest trick, however I did notice he ended each voice search command with a – please and thank you…