India is one of the strongest economies in the world. It is the second fastest growing economy behind China and is now the 12th largest globally. Even in the wake of the credit crunch, as the world braces itself in anticipation of a global economic slowdown, India, it would seem, is sitting pretty.

Lauded as being one of the BRIC nations, the name of the group of nations set to become the next G8, India has enjoyed exponential economic growth in the last eight years.

As a strong player in the global marketplace, India has learnt to take appropriate measures to minimise the effects caused by the global recession. While the UK and the rest of Europe are quaking at the thought of the credit crunch and being swamped by the ripples that are rapidly spreading across the pond from the US, India is in a relatively stable position. So why is this and how will India potentially ride out a downturn?

Over the last year, India’s corporate sector has seen a flurry of deal making, with capital raising and overseas acquisitions being major trends. In 2007, the Indian corporate sector was involved in $60.1 billion worth of M&A, which was a 109 percent increase from the year before, according to M&A consultancy Dealogic.

There is no doubt that acquisitions on a global scale are one of the mainstays of Indian’s burgeoning economic status. And most of the Indian corporates taking over foreign businesses are doing so by avoiding the highly leveraged transactions that have put the US market into a tailspin. Many of the acquisition targets have generally been profitable companies, as opposed to companies in trouble, meaning they have funded deals with bank loans and higher grade credit, which has helped them to steer clear of the credit crunch.

Of course the technology and the services industries have played a crucial role in India’s bid for economic superstardom. Companies from these industries have been at the forefront of India’s trend for global acquisitions, as they aim to position themselves as international entities, as opposed to companies that start and finish in the Asian sub-continent.

Over the last few years, many of the of the large Indian services and IT players have snapped up companies in the Americas and across Europe, in a bid to make their propositions even more appealing to their target customers in Europe and the USA. AppLabs itself in the last few years has pursued an acquisitive strategy, progressing from being an Indian player to a company with a global presence and it has done this predominantly through the buy outs of US and European technology services companies. 

Primarily it is India’s astute business acumen, enlightened strategy and optimistic attitude that have enabled it to steer clear of the credit crunch so far. However, the impact on the sub prime market means that the availability of debt to fund acquisitions is drying up. Whilst this might dent India’s propensity for growth, it is unlikely to stop it in its tracks.

India is a brave market, as are the other members of G8. Whether a global economic downturn occurs or not, there is little doubt that within the next ten to twenty years, the global economy will be a very different landscape, with India and China at the top of the tree.

SOA and SLA

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is all about Architectural paradigm (pattern/model), variety of heterogeneous systems (dissimilar), different locations and owners, and web services. SOA helps reduces expensive integration, allows for more asset reuse, increases business agility and most importantly reduces business risk.

Service-level agreement (SLAs) for SOA is a formal contract between a service provider and a consumer. The contracts in this regard are, service availability, performance, traffic levels, messages / queries per hour / minute / second, response time, rejected transactions, errors and so on.

Key to SOA Performance Testing

The key to successful performance testing in general require, understanding the application and the infrastructure, understanding the user/stakeholders of the application, generating accurate anticipated volumes of traffic, and investigating the impact of the traffic on the application and systems under test. SOA Adds Complexity to Performance Testing in terms of wide range of technologies, different applications and usages, different hardware / infrastructure, knowledge of the application and the technologies, and replicating the traffic patterns.

Overcoming Challenges

To simplify performance testing for SOA applications break them down into the smallest components possible, like individual Service, systems, databases, technology, protocols, messaging, and functionality. And then evaluate and analyze the performance of individual services based on components.

Adapting the methodologies like, narrowing the testing event to the smallest element/service and understanding the transaction, application service and the environment/systems, documenting the testing approach and the expected deliverables, developing automation to replicate transactions automation, performing Test Execution, monitoring the response time for the requests sent under varying traffic levels and the impact of the traffic on the application and infrastructure under varying traffic levels, measuring and analyzing the traffic patters to with the traffic/load, one can approach the concept.

The present economic downturn and the alarming global warming have mandated the consumers to choose companies with a greener image, intending to address both the issues.

With IT and data centers considered as significant contributors to environmental impact necessary steps need to be taken. To tackle it, the testing industry and the professionals working within it must assess the project, their proposed deliverables and compare these against a previously defined set of requirements, to understand whether or not they are fit for purpose.

• Until and unless highly needed replace travelling with utilizing communications technology.
• When handling Test Management, commission to sustainable, reusable environments, liaise closely with development community and be focused
• Perform impact analysis of change and direct testing accordingly
• When dealing with the Test Process, conduct an environmental analysis and design, order work methodically by maximizing efficiencies, and adhere to structured testing methodology
• To ensure environmental concerns the existing testing roles should be evolved
• Outstanding concerns should be properly assessed, prioritized, risk managed and scheduled for future release.

Testing plays a pivotal role in the IT world, accounting for 25-40% of project spend, and has a direct impact on resource usage and wastage through the testing of complex technology deliveries. The mindset and attitude of testing professionals will shift to focus on “greener” testing, whilst retaining the belief that the delivered product or service is 100% fit for purpose.

Key ‘Green’ Points to consider:

• Financial savings and profit earning potential increased through focused testing approach and reduced defect costs
• Improved brand awareness and industry recognition through improved quality and environmentally friendly leadership
• Customer growth and retention through climate competitiveness
• Increased staff morale through the adoption of “green” techniques

Algorithms are used to detect trading opportunities within the market. It is, ‘placing a buy or sell order of a defined quantity into a quantitative model that automatically generates the timing and size of orders based on the goals specified by the parameters and constraints of an algorithm”. An algorithm describes a sequence of steps by which patterns in real-time market data can be recognized through various statistical analyses and responded to in order to detect trading opportunities in the market. In times to go it is expected that 40% of the trading volume in the US equities markets will be contributed by algorithmic trading. The algorithms hence must be entirely reliable to maximize the opportunities.

But, before taking a plunge into algorithm trading, the system needs to go through a thorough testing process. Ensure the reliability of a particular trading algorithm before using it in a live market, the software infrastructure that helps implement a trading algorithm should be reliable and the trading algorithm needs to be tuned for speed of execution.

One of the common methods of testing algorithmic trading is ‘backtesting’. Testing algorithmic trading requires continuous data flow such as LTP, LTQ and market depth. Here a simulator is used to replicate the past data, trade price, traded volume and market depth. Backtesting uses the historical intraday data to identify how the strategies would work under different situations.

Algorithm strategies can be classified based on the complexity of the business functionality. Higher complexity will lead to more risk on performance and the profitability. As algorithmic trading involves different permutations and combinations of market movements, testing these algorithms would also be very complex as each scenario has to be tested. To handle the complex functionality, DMA Strategies, Quantitative Algorithms, and Investment strategies are the algorithms strategies that need to be scrupulously tested.

Algorithms have expanded the capabilities of the trader, making each more productive. Algorithmic trading is speed oriented and highly automated which needs a high level of efficiency in identifying the opportunities to be profitable. Hence the importance for testing algorithmic trading strategies is increasing. AppLabs, with its extensive experience of functional and performance testing of mission critical systems in capital markets has proven committed to ensuring software reliability.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are amongst the most strategic decisions that are taken in the corporate world. The directors of companies that engage in the M&A arena must ensure that they take all practical steps to ensure that shareholder value is at least preserved, and are ideally enhanced by the M&A process. They have to be aware of the potential for criminal and civil proceedings from regulatory bodies or shareholder groups if their corporate governance is called into question in matters of transparency and performance.

In order to maximize the potential for adding shareholder value to a merger or acquisition, not only should the financial strategy be sound but there should be strategic reviews of all areas of operation of the resulting corporate entity. Apart from formulating a change program within the new corporate entity, operational efficiency across the organization and a corresponding quality assurance is highly necessitated. And this is realized with an independent IT testing organization that would bring the benefits of objectivity, experience and expertise in strategy and operational implementation that will deliver cost effective risk mitigation, which will ensure delivery of IT systems that enable organizations to compete globally in a constantly changing corporate landscape.

IT systems underpin the successful operations of all departments: sales, marketing, HR, and all supply chain activities would not function effectively without robust and reliable IT systems aligned to deliver the functionality relevant to the respective department. And, in an M&A situation, major change programs usually result in a level of IT change and development that is far larger than the size of the projected business.  In order to effect the IT change, in the timescales required to deliver the enhanced shareholder value promised in the M&A strategy, it is almost always the case that external IT suppliers are required to provide the additional resources required to implement the IT change program. All this is possible only with robust and reliable IT systems, which mandates testing as its process.
Today there are two major test strategies in play within most IT dependent companies- the requirements based testing, appropriate when there is a major application refresh within an otherwise stable organization, and risk based testing, when change is required in every area of the new business.

In an M&A scenario, coercion of software, new to the existing customer is, unfortunately, an option. A user acceptance test at such a juncture is the best practice in IT development or procurement; it makes good business sense too.
The business value of a company resides in the data stored within the systems and the applications, and these data vary from system to system and application to application. Sometimes as binary data in a database, or may be held as human readable text files, or it might be transmitted between applications in an XML schema. In an established IT environment, the same data will exist in multiple locations and formats. Extending the IT environment with a new interface, system or application will require that the existing data maintains its validity as it moves from one place to another, and for the same data migration testing is required.

Operational IT costs account for 70-80% of most organization’s entire IT budget, and hence companies should focus on their operational SLA (Service Level Agreements) (SLAs) with the business units, and for this the IT infrastructure should undergo the Operational Acceptance test, which involves technical testing such as interoperability, disaster recovery tests, security testing and various forms of performance testing such as load and stress tests to ensure that the systems are available, responsive and resilient to the levels required by the business.

For an efficient and effective running of the merged or acquired organization, robust and reliable IT systems is a must, and the benefits of these is realized with an independent IT testing organization.

BASEL II is a very comprehensive and complex document, which will have a large impact on systems in many cases. The new Accord will enable some firms to use their own internal risk-management methodology to calculate the capital they require as opposed to a prescribed regulatory calculation. However, this will require them to amass and process a considerable amount of historical-loss data. These databases will have to be built and integrated with the banks processes. Data must be available to the banks and their subsidiaries across all geographical locations.

The solutions that will be delivered to cater for the BASEL II regulation changes must supply several key points of functionality. They must be able to accept and record external and internal ratings data; they must keep risk evaluation data for the required period (which at the time of writing is a rolling five years), and provide access to historical data on command from any relevant area of the business; the systems must be able to support a suitable number of users, allowing for future growth; transactions must be tested end-to-end to check the different levels of hardware and software involved; a risk-based testing approach should be employed to ensure the most critical areas of the systems receive the lion’s share of the testing; the new hardware/software (and all business critical processes) must be recoverable in the event of a disaster situation causing systems outage. Not only should the full business critical list of systems and processes be tested, but also individual sub-systems should be tested; a regression test suite must be constructed for use when testing that existing functionality remains intact when system enhancements are added; and finally, the new systems must be integrated smoothly into the banks’ processes and systems;

Apart from the present Basel II Accord, the further amendments will surely be needed upon completion of the review period adding to its complexity and ultimate implementation throughout the industry. The next few years will hence be strenuous for finance organizations who, as well as implementing changes for the BASEL II Accord, will also potentially be faced with large-scale programs such as the Euro, Straight Through Processing / T+1 and other regulatory changes.

For the compliance of the same, the organizations should look at ways in which testing can become more standardized and more cost effective. AppLabs’ advice to organizations is to ensure appropriate testing strategies and plans are in place to mitigate the inherent risk of changes to IT systems. Organizations must also ensure that their testing programs provide sufficient coverage and appropriate prioritization of tests and testing.

As organizations look to reduce costs across a wide range of operational disciplines, IT will become under the radar more and more. The impact of project slippage, poor quality delivery and inadequate solutions will prove a pain-point for organizations who have traditionally failed in these critical areas. And Testing, like all project disciplines, especially the automation testing is one such key area where cost-savings and project efficiencies can be generated. However, to maximize the benefits across all, there needs some simple principles to be followed.

To really make test automation work we need scripts that are reusable, robust, and reliable. More importantly, however, the scripts need to be modular in a framework. The scripts should be data driven, using external data in spreadsheets or a database that the business users can control. To identify whether automation is appropriate for any given project, we need to understand the benefits of each type of testing, and when each method is most appropriate.

Productivity: Automated Testing gives the confidence that new functionality has not changed the behaviour of the existing code. Takes the tedium away from repetitive tasks and assures accuracy.

Repeatability and consistency: The tests can be exactly reproduced for regression purposes and can also be exactly repeated for deeper diagnosis by the developers.

Speed of Execution: The scripts run as fast as the AUT. This allows testers to be more productive, and hence improves the test pack’s coverage.

Maximizing Machine Resources: The Tests can be run out of hours at no additional cost

Results Recording: Test results are automatically recorded for all outcomes. Test success evidence is available for audit purposes.

Ad Hoc and Exploratory Testing: Not suitable for ad hoc testing (although this is a possible use for record and replay).

Dynamic Applications: Automated scripts need a high level of maintenance for highly dynamic applications, although this can be minimized by the use of modular, reusable scripts and functions.

Make the most of your test automation tools. Define your requirements, and then chose the tools accordingly. Test automation should not be looked at project specifically, but as an enterprise wide asset. The most realistic way forward is to prove it on a few projects first. Pilot projects should be encouraged as a precursor to a Center of Excellence for automation where a centralized team of automation experts can be tooled and skilled up and shared amongst several projects. The experience and expertise built up can then be readily adopted by other projects. With this mind-set it is more likely that testing will be incorporated earlier and more fully, into the software development lifecycle.

In today’s fast paced world, listening skills have become critically important for being successful managers. I would like to share my views on this aspect. I firmly believe that our ability to influence others is directly in proportion to how well we listen to them. I would like to emphasize that   ‘listening is not hearing’, it is ‘hearing and understanding’. A very common assumption people make is, ‘if you have listened to some one, it means that you have accepted what ever the other person said’. This is not true. Listening simply means understanding. Whether we agree with what we have heard is another matter. This simple clarity of thought about listening is very liberating and sets the stage for us to effectively ‘listen’ to others.

I would like to lay stress on some of the blocks in the path of ‘effective listening’.

1. It is natural human tendency to see a situation through our own colored glasses (Read it as experience). Because of the similarity of situations experienced in the past, we tend to presume, often imagining things that are non-existent. We also selectively filter out information that does not fit into our thinking pattern.  This leads to reading the situation incorrectly which in turn blocks us from getting total insight into the situation.

2. I have also observed especially in meetings that we have a tendency to evaluate the speaker’s thoughts, or give our suggestions and inputs before he /she finishes speaking, thus interrupting the speaker.

3. Another  listening barrier is a  “pre-occupied mind” which means we are not paying enough attention to the speaker but pretending that we are actually ‘involved’ in the conversation. This can annoy and irritate the speaker to a great extent.  I would like to present one fact here. The rate at which people speak is about 150-200 words/minute but the human mind processes about 800 words/minute. This translates to about 75% of additional time that is available for the mind. How well this additional time is used differentiates a good listener from an ordinary listener. Good listeners use this additional time to their advantage by concentrating on non-verbal cues (things that are not explicitly told), body-language; gauging emotions of the speaker, tone etc….
4. Another common irritating factor for the speaker is ‘distraction’ from the listener which include telephone calls, interruptions by visitors, frequent glances at the monitor to check email etc.
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Good listening requires giving undivided and complete attention to the speaker. This allows the listener to capture what is being told, what is being masked and also helps in assessing the speaker’s emotions etc… There are numerous advantages of good listening such as, leads to empathy, enriching relationships, productive work, resolving disagreements, better team work and helps one learn to become a good listener.

The fundamentals of good listening require courtesy and respect for the speaker. Below are some of the ideas around as an action plan for improving listening skills. This is mostly common sense. Registering these thoughts in our mind & making them as a habit can make a huge difference to our listening skills.

• Complete focus on the speaker
• Let the speaker finish what he/she has in mind completely with out interruptions (Mainly judgments and confrontations)
• Avoid/minimize distractions like the ones mentioned above
• Be visually enthusiastic about the speaker
• Use your eyes, hands to show that you are giving un-divided attention to the speaker. Try to maintain eye contact to re-affirm to the speaker you are attentive and is interested in what he/she is saying
• Listen with empathy
• With-hold judgment while speaker is talking
• Resist the temptation of disagreeing with the speaker before he/she completely finishes his/her view point
• Gain in-sight by asking open-ended questions
• Open-ended question does not have a binary answer like Yes or No. Try to deep dive into the situation by asking questions like “What happened”, “How did it happen”, “when did it happen”. Avoiding “Why” helps us to have a very spirited dialogue
• Try to paraphrase and summarize
• When discussions are happening with “high-emotions”, these two basic skills are of great help. Paraphrasing and summarizing helps us to get on same page with the speaker.

The client, an international financial service organization, wanted to upgrade its existing mortgage application with new features, including the integration of a third party insurance system. This would ensure that the mortgages would be intrinsically linked to relevant insurance products, allowing the client to offer its customers a onestop-shop. There was a real competitive advantage for the client to do this; hence it became a strategic initiative with senior business sponsorship.

The project itself was made of three distinct components; integration of a new 3rd party insurance application, implementation of a maintenance release and a complete Siebel upgrade. Each of these would provide a challenge individually, and it soon became clear that the integrated technical solution was not robust. AppLabs was engaged to help the client understand what was causing the issues and how the client should approach mitigating the business risk that was being exposed.

Initially, AppLabs completed a smoke test against the integrated applications. This highlighted that an upgrade to the latest Siebel version of the application was failing to work with the current configuration of LDAP. To overcome the repercussion, AppLabs recommended the client to implement a Risk Based Testing approach. This will mitigate the risk of not being able to test all planned items in scope. AppLabs has a comprehensive and defined method of implementing Risk Based Testing, so changing policy to meet the business challenge was relatively seamless.

By the time the test environment was configured and ready for test execution (without the Siebel upgrade), all the preparatory work for implementing the Risk Based Testing had been completed. The profiling of tests was carried out in such a way that the planned 1000 test cases, was reduced by 20% to 800 test cases–all of which were executed within the timeframe to meet the original implementation date.

The improvement in the testing processes and move to Risk Based Testing resulted in true efficiencies. The approach resulted in a reduction of 360 man-days to the project–equating to a saving of £144,000–representing 11% of the project’s testing budget, and above all hitting the deadline date.

Agile projects present their own challenges to the testing team. Unclear project scope, multiple iterations, minimal documentation, early and frequent testing needs and active stakeholder involvement all demand special and diverse skills from the testing team. Some of the essential skills are illustrated here:

Resource Management: a pool of professional test resources offers the scope for effective resource management across the agile project life cycle. There should be an appropriate mix of domain specialists who plan and gather requirements in addition to test engineers who will have multiple skill sets and own the test execution.

Communication: The iterative model of development and the frequency of releases mandate that all teams have a common understanding of the user requirements. The testing team in particular should adopt the most efficient and effective methods of conveying information to the developers, project stakeholders, domain specialists using a combination of face-to-face conversation, meetings and workshops, phone calls, email and WebEx meetings.

Processes: Another key success factor for Agile Development is the implementation of quality governance processes. Organizations considering the use of Agile should ensure that configuration management, change management, project management and release management are in place. Testing teams which bring with them best practices and are accredited with globally recognized certifications (e.g. TMMi, CMMi, ISO etc.) will be able to help organizations accelerate the testing process.

Requirements Elicitation: Approaches like, getting access to all the material that can provide input for the intended product behavior; knowledge transfer from product owners and subject matter experts (SME); gaining insights into the capabilities needed from the product under test by exploration of comparable products, reading user manuals and user documentation, exploring help text via user interface and taking an application tour through the GUI; exploratory test engineers should be able to analyze a product, think critically to evaluate risks and craft test cases that systematically explore the product; thought leaders in test automation; will help the testers equip with alternative ways of deriving test requirements. zpe75amny8