Quality Assurance as an Ideal Assistant for Successful Digital Transformations

Digital transformations (DT) have become an indispensable component of modern business strategies allowing companies to stay ahead of the curve, improve customer experience, and ensure business continuity despite constantly changing global context. Just have a look at statistics: experts state that in 2027 worldwide expenses on DT will reach $3.9 trillion, while World Economic Forum forecasts that DT significance for society can be estimated at $100 trillion by 2025!

DT is always associated with sophisticated processes, such as an extensive cultural shift or the adoption of advanced technologies (e.g., AI/ML, AR/VR, blockchain, Internet of Everything, cloud). So, how to embrace such alterations with minimal disruption and maximum confidence?

I suggest that organizations pay attention to the introduction of QA and software testing practices. They can ensure that technology is smoothly integrated into the entire enterprise, novel digital products are functioning correctly and fully meet end-user expectations related to both functional and non-functional aspects, and even contribute to saving costs by allowing organization to fix issues early when they haven’t escalated into full-fledged, costly problems.

Therefore, in this article, I’ll focus on the QA value for DT and highlight probable priority verifications to support tough journeys.

Unlocking digital transformation value for business

DT is characterized by infusing diverse technologies into a company's business processes to meet desired objectives, for instance:

• Sales departments choose to implement AI-driven tools to increase sales efficacy and boost profit
• eCommerce companies experiment with introducing AR/VT to enhance shopping experiences
• Software development giants that choose to invest money into cloud computing to improve business operations.

All these complex actions have common goals - prioritize customer needs and expectations, deliver impeccable and secure customer service, digitalize analog work, and optimize companies’ process, thus increase business profitability and effectiveness.

Despite DT intricacy, all the efforts definitely pay off. When done correctly, DT can provide the following crucial benefits:

• Risk management. When using cloud for storage, the chances of data loss are minimized due to improved infrastructure.
• Focus on security. When undergoing DT, company-wide security strategies are introduced to protect digital assets and sensitive data.
• Change readiness. When companies understand that more aspects will be digital, they are ready for new market trends, new ways of doing business and can adapt easier if changes happen.
• Better efficiency. Experts state that cutting-edge technologies, such as generative AI, can automate half of work tasks by 2060.
• Process optimization. It’s also possible to increase staff efficiency on processes such as document sharing and signing.
• Decreased expenses. Due to process automation, optimization and replacing manual work with algorithms, companies can redirect it in other priority directions. It’s also cheaper to outsource computing than have in-house hardware that must be maintained and upgraded regularly.
• Improved agility. With advanced approaches, such as cloud, businesses can quickly scale, modernize their IT environments and legacy systems, and adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
• More qualified staff. Current employees will have to acquire new skills required to work in a new environment with advanced tech, otherwise they will be replaced with more tech-savvy candidates.

Understanding QA’s place within digital transformation

Nowadays, the cost of an error in the worst scenarios can reach millions of dollars and even lead to business closure. Just remember the case of a financial services company that lost $440 million because of a glitch in novel software that led to the quick acquiring and selling of shares. Or another example: the space agency that lost its $125 million spacecraft because of an error in metric measurements.

And while undergoing DT, the risk of errors rises as it often presupposes the introduction and integration of new systems and complex migrations. This is where QA and software testing should step in.

A holistic approach to quality control serves as a shield that detects issues early in the integration or migration process, thus minimizing their appearance after the go-live stage and mitigating probability of any expensive rework or missed deadlines.

By integrating QA during the planning stages of SDLC, QA specialists think ahead and define potential risks and their severity during the requirements stage, which reduces the risk of time and financial waste in case something goes wrong.

QA strategy to support digital transformation

To safeguard software in the best possible way, avoid costly post-release rework, and ensure successful DT, it's important to analyze business needs and priorities in advance and build the testing scope accordingly. However, from my experience, I can recommend paying attention to the most basic and significant verifications that can contribute to project success.

1. Cybersecurity testing

Unfortunately, cyber attacks continue to hit diverse companies, and often their consequences are severe. For instance, several years ago, a DNS provider suffered a DDoS attack that caused an Internet service outage across Europe and the USA, which affected top companies such as Amazon and Netflix. Apart from DDoS attacks, hackers can use malware, phishing, zero-day, man-in-the-middle attacks - all aimed at stealing or damaging data, disrupting software operation, and causing financial and reputational damage. In addition, the transformation of old cloud-based systems or introduction of new ones can cause novel security loopholes for the organizations that have already tested their software.

To prevent disruptions of any type, organizations can include cybersecurity testing into their QA strategy. Penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, social engineering, static code analysis, and other verifications performed in line with the OWASP methodology help spot vulnerabilities at the earliest SDLC stages. In addition, adherence to a DevSecOps culture prioritizes ongoing security monitoring, which helps minimize the risk of any security loopholes and prevent cyber frauds.

2. Performance testing

Regardless of the platform, software performance is crucial as it directly influences the speed of operation and, as a result, user satisfaction. The more time it takes for a website page to download, the higher chances are that users will turn to competitors. And statistics proves this fact - according to experts, 53% of mobile users will leave the page if they have to wait for more than 3 seconds. In addition, software must withstand a high influx of end users, otherwise outages are inevitable. Also, migrating extensive data amounts into new systems or in cloud can have potential negative influence on performance.

To prevent them, organizations can run server-side tests to make sure the software can cope with overload, define its maximum limits, and identify current bottlenecks. Also, client-side verifications help detect problems that negatively affect page loading speed. With this complex approach, companies can prevent bottlenecks that spoil the experience of end users.

3. Functional testing

DT is related to the implementation of new software or introduction of new features into current IT products. Therefore, QA engineers apply functional testing to validate every new software feature and confirm that IT products operate without any issues and can seamlessly integrate with other software in place.

Depending on the business need, QA specialists can conduct diverse functional testing types. For instance, when new changes have been introduced to the code, the team performs regression testing to ensure no problems have occurred afterwards. Or, for example, before deploying software to production, it's important to run acceptance tests that serve as the ultimate barrier to prevent issues of diverse severity.

4. Integration testing

Within a DT, often it’s critical that multiple systems work together as a single, coherent solution. It’s a difficult objective without integration testing. When done early in the SDLC, it helps QA engineers to track and rectify compatibility glitches and issues with data and data exchange to prevent data losses during systems interaction and make sure the system can fulfill its tasks when integrated with other systems.

5. User acceptance testing (UAT)

Within DT, UAT plays a special role as it helps ensure that user requirements and business goals are fully met. This is the last and a very important step in the SDLC before releasing software to the market. Based on real-life user scenarios, QA engineers check the entire software workflow to confirm that the IT product performs its functions exactly as expected.

6. Migration testing

During DT, often companies need to migrate digital systems to the cloud or to new systems, which presupposes transfer of extensive data amounts. To prevent data losses and ensure a smooth transition, organizations can supplement their QA strategy with migration testing. During this process, QA engineers identify data structure of the source and target systems, compare information in them to ensure that all the data has been transferred correctly and there are no losses or duplicates, verify integration of the target system with other solutions, and make sure system performance has remained on the same high level.

7. Test automation

When it comes to DT, velocity is a crucial factor that provides a competitive edge and allows businesses to reach goals in a more simplified manner. To streamline QA processes, companies may consider automated testing. Scripts executing verifications without human involvement help minimize risks of any failures related to a human factor, boost accuracy, and accelerate speed.

In a nutshell

DT helps businesses improve overall performance, speed up diverse functions, transform and be ready for novel challenges, develop new IT products, and grow a customer base. However, such change is challenging and requires additional support.

QA activities, such as cybersecurity, performance, functional, integration, migration testing, UAT, test automation, and some others can ensure failsafe software operation, decrease testing time, and contribute to reaching set goals within time and budget.