Why Invest in Test Automation?
In today’s investment management landscape, frequent updates/enhancements, instrument lifecycle changes, regulatory requirements and other initiatives all require asset managers to perform regular software testing as part of business-as-usual or other initiatives.??Testing within the context of capital markets?is often more challenging and usually requires Subject Matter Experts (SME) resources to perform the testing, or have them review and validate the results.??
Our experience indicates that due to additional demands from Front Office for new capabilities, more access and volumes of data, higher frequency of onboarding of additional applications/systems and an onerous regulatory environment,?organizational system testing efforts are?increasing and will continue to do so.??
At FINARCH, we think it is critical that organizations begin to explore better ways to perform and manage their testing efforts.
It does not matter how modern your technical systems and infrastructure is, as long as organizations continue to rely on manual testing cycles, they will never be able to optimize their release structure and improve system and organizational agility
We suggest organizations build up and use test automation to adapt to the increasing volume and complexity of testing demands.?Test automation is a completely different approach and mindset when compared to manual testing.?
At a minimum, test automation requires:
In addition to the technical and knowledge components, test automation requires a change in organizational mindset where teams need a kaizen-like continuous improvement model to refine the test suite.
However, if successfully implemented - test automation has numerous benefits.
Test automation can optimize your organizations release schedule, increase testing accuracy, enhance test coverage to include end-to-end components, and better manage key resource constraints
Investing in Test Automation
Test automation is a daunting task for most organizations for the reasons mentioned in the table above.?It requires a initial upfront investment, has delivery/project risk, and requires a reorg of the people and processes that make up your existing QA teams.??
The decision to invest in test automation should be evaluated like any investment opportunity.?From an economic perspective, test automation is similar to any capital investment where after the test library is built, the ongoing maintenance cost is minimal when compared to manual testing cycles.?More important than pure economics, through investing in test automation organizations can benefit from externalities such as increasing the technical capabilities of staff, and transitioning to a digital and more more agile organization.
Organizations that do invest in test automation provide significant returns on investment, and empower their IT and Operational teams to build technical skills and capabilities
At FINARCH,?we are capital markets and investment management system experts.?We have the business and operational knowledge to quickly understand how your business operates, and the technical know-how to build your test library and get you up and running quickly.?Combined with our knowledge of the leading software used in automated testing, we can fast track your automated testing journey so your organization can start realizing a return on its investment.
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Helping clients achieve their digital transformation goals within capital markets
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