As business units clamor for faster releases, delivering updates once or twice a year is no longer enough. Moving to a more Agile software development model, especially in an SAP environment, lets you bring innovation and change to the business – but also requires extensive SAP testing to ensure that any changes function as intended. Testing a small change in a release may seem easy, but how does it affect the production environment?
We all know that SAP manual testing is time consuming and can result in flaws being overlooked, and SAP regression testing on a large scale for every change is impractical. It can take weeks or months for SAP testing to be completed manually, which defeats the purpose of moving to a more agile delivery model and works counter to business strategies. But there are ways to keep the business safe by moving to a more effective SAP testing model.
1. Adopt SAP Test Automation.
To keep the business safe from potential programming bugs, release incompatibility, and security vulnerabilities, organizations are turning to Robotic Test Automation. This lets you test changes every single time, without having to wait for manual testing or worry about missing something important during the testing process. This is testing reinvented for the modern, agile IT department.
2. Test More Than the Obvious.
It’s all too easy to test only the frequently-used business processes, particularly during SAP manual testing. But when it comes down to the less-used processes, those can be neglected to speed up the next software release. However, if those rarely-used processes aren’t tested, it’s likely that one day they will break the system. Comprehensive Robotic Test Automation makes sure these processes are tested, and in less time than it would take to run manual tests.
3. Approach Risk-Based Testing with Suspicion.
The big flaw with risk-based testing is that you’re only testing the scenarios that will most likely be used due to the technical changes from a release. However, that essentially ignores other scenarios, and as with testing just the obvious scenarios, it opens up the organization to risk from untested scenarios in a release. For example, master data may not be tested in most risk-based testing programs, but even small changes to master data could dramatically affect the business logic used in processes – and possibly break the system.
4. Test More Than Just the UI.
Organizations use SAP in a variety of ways, and just testing the UI is like testing just the gas gauge on the car. Sure, you know the tank of gas is full, but does the engine need oil? Testing needs to be comprehensive in every possible way, down to how other systems and end users are affected. It’s impossible to know how other interfaces are affected by changes to the SAP system without testing these connections, particularly as the business units rely on other systems to access and use SAP data for critical business functions. One broken interface, such as with a CRM system, could bring business to a screeching halt.
5. Shift SAP Testing Left.
“Testing left” is a concept that basically comes down to testing early and often. In SAP, the reality is that companies often wait until very late in the software development cycle to start testing, particularly since SAP is seen as complex and has so many dependencies on other systems. In the past, it was nearly impossible to get around this because companies couldn’t load a QA environment with test data if the test versions weren’t ready – and they often weren’t. Today, service virtualization can help with SAP regression testing, even before the code needs QA. Companies can start shifting left – testing early and often, in ways that weren’t possible before.
6. Integrate Testing into CI/CD Workflows.
As soon as code is ready, it’s critical to start SAP testing. Once companies start testing integrations, going beyond the UI, and begin testing earlier in the software development lifecycle, along with adding in regression testing, it becomes important to weave it into the CI/CD workflow. The idea behind Robotic Test Automation is to make testing as simple as possible, and it makes sense that, once you have it in place, to make it as much a part of the CI/CD processes as the development itself.
The reality is, with the availability of Robotic Test Automation for SAP testing, it’s possible to integrate testing into every part of the development process. That makes it easier to move to a DevOps model for SAP and to meet business demands.
Learn more about these 6 steps to effective SAP testing by watching our webinar, or request a Testimony demo today to discover how our DevOps tools can help you build a more agile SAP environment.
