Master Transition in just three steps and Magic Bullets to win it

As per Linkedin survey across IT, Legal, FM, HR, Finance and Procurement, 46% of the respondents said that they are very likely to Outsource Software Development if their company can realize cost benefits out of it. As more and more projects are transitioned offshore or they scale up at offshore, It’s imminent that these projects are transitioned well and newly on boarded team start productivity as quickly as possible. As shown in below diagram, clients may want to transition/ outsource for variety of reasons, you need to understand the client sensitives and regulations that he may come across as part of solutioning

 

For customers the paramount of transition success is it should carry no risk or minimal risk and should cost less. While for an outsourcing provider the success is on

1. Ensuring that transition is smooth
2. relationships are maintained
3. value is achieved
4. Benefits are realized along with establishing new connections and
5. Improving relationships between client stakeholders and their employees.

Many friends asked me to share a comprehensive plan so I am sharing this

Now that gave you a formal deep drive into how to go about transition, let me discuss three Magic Bullets you need to be aware off and to be included as part of transition.

1. Automation- Are you automating as much as possible and as fast as possible?
2. Innovation: What innovation you are bringing on the board.
3. Process upgrade: Update the workflows/ processes through implementation of tools

 

1. Benefits: Are benefits measured at each level? Do you have online transparency through proper dash board?
2. Quality: How is quality ensured are you failing fast and do you have enough check lists in place
3. Predictability: Do you have formalize preventive action and corrective action mechanism in place? Have you embraced AI

1. Regulatory: how are you managing and retaining client data? What mechanisms do you have to ensure that your operations meet compliance requirements

 

Agile & DevOps handshake for business agility & increased quality

In this digital world, as per report by McKinsey, around 30 billion objects may be connected through IoT by 2020.  The trend is that it will be 1-3 devices per person. The adoption of IOT is very high in Manufacturing, Remote health care , Transportation, Security and bringing other consumer fields which were never thought off or explored earlier.  Improving efficiencies and monetization of services for improvement of economies are the core use cases for IOT.

Azure IoT, Cisco IoT Cloud connect, Ge Predix, IBM Blue Mix, RTI, ThingWorx and other platforms are available in market to help organizations quickly migrate their devices to IOT.  It is observed that organizations do not onboard all their IOT systems as whole, but will essentially migrate/ integrate their existing devices into the IOT and reuse majority of existing devices. 

When varied devices are connected, Administered, Managed and Updated, retired/ Upgraded with additional features, the testing and Business assurance for such system is quite challenging.  The agility of business that you launch new features and manage them as quickly as possible and enhance them with minimal disruption makes you to embrace DevOps. Your approach should cover QA involvement in Continuous Development, Continuous Deployments and Continuous testing.

Key Design Considerations for IOT components:

• Open ended Architecture, Monolithic Application design
• Secured Operations System
• Fault tolerance
• Secured network/ Communication layer
• Asynchronous Data connectivity

Testing considerations to be taken closely by Quality engineering team are:

• Testing SME  to be involved from early phases of life cycle. Development, Operations and Business people work cohesively
• Testing each and Every subcomponent
• Testing on simulators and testing on actual devices
• Testing across layers in Devices, Network, Communication and Data management etc.
• Automation testing at all layers Code, UI, Data and Services
• Looped testing covering Unit, Module and Integration testing
• Inbuilt focus on Performance and Security testing from component layer
• On demand/ automated environment and network provisioning
• Overarching automation covering e2e scenarios cutting across devices, environment and networks

Comment here/ write to me  to get free ready reckoner check list on IOT testing