Test Data Management – A Process Framework

Test Data Management – A Process Framework

Test Data Management, a service that caters to the various data needs for development/enhancement/maintenance and testing of applications, plays a vital role in the IT system of any organization. An increasing number of organizations are requesting “Test Data Management” as a managed, centralized IT service from its vendors, mainly with the objectives of realizing cost benefits, reduced time-to-market and improved quality of the end-product. However, Test Data Management is not as simple as it seems at first glance and comes with its own set of challenges.

The intent of this paper is to discuss the challenges and typical practices in providing Test Data Management services, and share a process solution that addresses the challenges.

Introduction

In today’s world of competitive market, organizations change their business trends and strategies frequently to sustain growth. The changes in business trends result in development of new IT applications or changing the existing ones, which then result in various data needs in sub-production environments to facilitate development/enhancement/maintenance of the IT applications and, of course, testing.

Test Data Management thus plays a vital role in the IT system of any organization. An ineffective test data management may lead to:

o Inadequate testing and thus poor quality of product
o Increased time-to-market
o Increased costs from redundant operations and rework
o Non-compliance with regulatory norms on data confidentiality

In view of the above, an increasing number of organizations are requesting “Test Data Management” as a managed, centralized IT service from its vendors. The major benefits that any organization seeks from such a service are:

o Reduced cost in test data management
o Improved data quality, which will contribute to improved testing and thus improved quality of end product
o Timely data delivery, which will contribute to faster test executions and thus reduced time-to-market
o Strict adherence to regulatory norms on data confidentiality (more than a benefit, this is a “must-have”)
o Freeing up of the bandwidth of developers and testers for their “core” work that is, code development and testing

A well-defined process framework, along with effective use of tools for test data creation and masking, can enable a fast realization of the above benefits.

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