A test environment configuration comprises various intricate components and complex processes. Therefore preparing a comprehensive and effective test data and environment management strategy is imperative.
Without an efficient test environment strategy, your entire development cycle, especially the testing phase workflows, can land into absolute mayhem. The result? Inaccurate test results and poor build quality of your software.
An efficient test environment enables complete visibility into a testing cycle while aligning all the relevant elements to obtain the desired test output. To orchestrate this level of meticulousness critical for a robust test environment, Test Data and Environment Management are essential.
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This article will explain the 4 mistakes that you should absolutely avoid during test data management.
Preparing A Test Environment Without Understanding The Requirements
Preparing a test environment without initially understanding the test data requirements results in a severe breach between what was expected, required, and delivered.
If the test environment manager lacks clarity on what exactly they need to develop and release, they might end up serving wine to someone who asked for fruit punch.
Additionally, a test environment that’s not adhering to the test specifications may be designed with a varying set of configurations, test data, software, hardware, etc., then what was necessary to perform the required test.
This non-compliance will not just lead to failure but will also result in a further increase in the testing costs and delay in the delivery schedule that may tarnish your brand image.
Vast Difference In Test Data and Production Data
The enterprise release management process encompasses various types of test environments (for various levels of testing) – development environment, QA environment, staging, and production environment.
Generally, developers and engineers use the development environment to test the codebase they develop/write before processing them to the next phase. In the Testing/QA environment, regression testing ensures that the updated feature doesn’t adversely affect the existing ones.
This environment is also utilized for conducting other relevant functional and non-functional testing, as per requirement.
The staging environment needs to be a replica of the production environment. Therefore, the staging test data needs to be as similar to the live environment as possible since it helps the testers to understand a software application’s real behaviour after deployment.
The staging environment involves maximum detection of bugs and prevents the issues from getting leakage into production or live environments.
With vast differences between test data and production data, discrepancies may arise, resulting in faulty results.
Not Maintaining A Centralised Repository
A centralized repository for test data management is vital for two reasons – ownership and team alignment. Without a centralized knowledge repository, your team may suffer from knowledge gaps about the manual updates performed on any test environment setup. Various expensive processes and inefficiencies may arise if these gaps aren’t filled up during test runs.
The test resources allocation system is dynamic and may vary with time. If there is no record of the previous changes in test environment resources, the succeeding resources might find themselves treading on a risky path without knowing what the course leads to.
With a centralized repository, a single source of requirements and changes can be established. Thus, the test environment managers and concerned teams can be on the same page pertaining to the recent updates and modifications.
Additionally, a central data repository reduces release risks while offering holistic visibility into real-time actions related to a test environment.
Also Read: Why Is Test Data Management So Important?
Not Following Data Masking Standards For Test Data Management
Using the real data in production as test data without following data masking and other protection policies involves a huge risk. The test data and environment need to replicate the production environment and data as closely as possible.
However, it is never recommended to utilize the production data for performing tests. Although the production data will provide quicker and impeccable results than the synthetic test data, using it for conducting tests is extremely dangerous as it makes you more vulnerable to data thefts.
Since the software application you’re developing is under test, it’s still not free from bugs and vulnerabilities. It becomes easy for malicious hackers to gain access to unmasked data.
In the unfortunate event of a security breach targeting test environment vulnerabilities, the unmasked data will be leaked into the hands of notorious criminals. However, the encrypted data won’t be useful or valuable, thus rendering the breach unfruitful.
