Can Service Virtualization boost Agile testing strategy?

Bot, an artificial intelligence (AI) powered chat program, is changing the face of technology-human interface. They are being declared as new applications for the future. Interestingly, non-profit organizations with substantial resources and technology support are trying to explore ways to use chatbot technology for the larger good. Can Agile test strategy with effective implementation of Service Virtualization (SV) bring relevance and add value for such path-breaking projects?

In an ideal scenario, software testing and operations teams are expected to work in tandem and deliver quality with speed, cost effectively. In real-development environment things change, as applications get complex with numerous interdependent factors that pose challenge in the production phase.

Service Virtualization emulates the performance of services in a virtual set-up to help address the challenges of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) testing strategy. At the same time, if implemented effectively, SV can speed up the testing and development process.

With Service Virtualization the DevOps teams can leverage virtual services instead of pooling in resources from the production. This can boost recurring and thorough testing even if any key components are not present within your system architecture. It helps emulate the behavior of essential elements that would be eventually present in the final production set-up.

Today Applications are multifaceted and need to build robustness for managing any real-time defects. Service Virtualization with Agile Testing strategy can help establish a comprehensive development and testing mechanism. Additionally, it enables Integration Testing for complex applications way ahead in the development process by eliminating bottlenecks that could compromise time-to-market and delay the production for an Application under Test (AUT).

Service Virtualization is exceptionally relevant while developing complex Cloud-based, API-based, and SOA-based systems. It is critically important in a situation where the required hardware and software components are not easily available for testing.

Enterprises and development teams are increasingly implementing Service Virtualization with Agile approach to enhance productivity, cut down testing costs, and deploy quality software within a shorter time span. It can further support parallel development practices, accelerate time-to-market, enhance quality, and encourage collaborative efforts between testing and development teams.

Service Virtualization has been enabling organizations to gain competitive advantage over other organizations that are still going by the linear-development strategy. It helps eliminate roadblocks that disrupt Agile and parallel development.

Let’s look at some key benefits that Service Virtualization brings for the Agile Testing strategy.

• Promptly creates patterns/situations that emulate the expected actions

Agile development/testing takes a ‘sprint’ approach, where various teams are working simultaneously to pursue shorter goals. So, there are numerous instances where hiccups are felt while working on interconnected components within a system. These deadlocks are experienced when teams are waiting to access dependent functionalities.

Service Virtualization helps minimize such deadlocks by virtually providing resources and assets. For instance, by using graphical interface you can quickly create a virtual asset that presents the required behavior for development and testing tasks.

• Swiftly upgrade the asset when requirements change

In a development scenario and specifically in an Agile set-up, requirements constantly evolve. So, the virtual assets should be flexible and easy to alter in such situations. Service Virtualization helps do that easily and quickly. This is one of the key requirements in an Agile Testing approach.

• Provide shared access to evolving assets

In an Agile approach, diverse teams work on diverse systems where resources are required for testing and development. Various team members are in need of the virtual assets, for instance, developers, testers, business analysts, or any team member who could be located anywhere globally.

Service Virtualization facilitates a scenario where the assets are available for all at any given point of time, on-demand!

• Testing on the go…

With the conventional and traditional approach, testing and development teams have to wait for the completed applications to deploy and check for proper functional, integration, and performance testing. Service Virtualization helps build a robust application by generating virtual assets that can be leveraged for testing the application’s performance and any other functionality almost in a near-LIVE scenario.

All-in-all, Service Virtualization helps to gauge the holistic performance/behavior of an application in a scenario that could be relevant once the application goes LIVE. It is useful for test-driven development (TDD) teams to speed up the production schedule by focusing on identifying the bug at the API layer.

Leveraging SV services is recommended to save costs in the development and testing cycle. The software development team can save costs and time when the development cycle needs repeated testing against dependent third-party components.

What can you expect from Service Virtualization in the future?

Saving time and money have been the key reasons for considering Service Virtualization, as popular SV software applications can run on commonly available and affordable hardware. Also, virtually available resources can be easily modified and recycled to fit the requirements.

Nevertheless, the decision to set up SV solution totally depends on the organization’s cost-benefit analysis. With the changing dynamics and growing importance of testing/quality assurance, SV is a needed option and a feasible one. For instance, experts say that virtualizing the API itself is a highly cost-effective decision.

Today, performance and functionality of the application weighs high. It is a business-critical decision and interface for determining viability and commercial success. Agile testing and workflow methodologies are becoming common, so implementing a resourceful Service Virtualization tool for parallel development tasks becomes essential.

The idea is to make assets available anytime anywhere!

Enterprises are inclining towards business-oriented architectures like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Service Virtualization with the sheer objective to build robust applications and reach faster to the market. Agile approach further brings flexibility and collaboration amongst teams to deliver innovative enterprise level application/critical technology experiments.

A recent report talks about how a group of scientists from the University of Illinois have created biological robots (bio-bots) that can walk and even swim independently with electrical or light signals. Service Virtualization with an Agile approach can reinforce the impact of testing with such experiments.

Cigniti has been an experienced testing partner for many organizations while adopting Agile approach at various stages in the development cycle. You can also leverage our Distributed Agile Testing Framework to support a global delivery model.

We also work with enterprises to provide Service Virtualization and testing solutions and effectively simulate essential virtual assets to automate regression, integration, and performance testing.

Connect with us to effectively integrate Service Virtualization services in an Agile environment and bring velocity and quality for your releases.