Cloud migration testing to drive desired business outcomes
Due to a widespread digital transformation, companies more often tend to choose cloud migration because of the multiple benefits it provides. In part, these benefits include high flexibility due to the ability to quickly scale resources, decreased costs as there’s no need to maintain expensive hardware anymore, industry compliance as platform’s often have embedded compliance certification levels, and mitigated risks because of built-in back-up and recovery systems. So, it’s little wonder that the cloud software market size will rise to $168.6 billion in 2025, which is 3.5 more in comparison with 2015.
However, this transformation is highly intricate, especially when dealing with legacy systems or software modernization. To successfully cope with such IT solutions and fit into a set time frame and budget, companies can turn to QA as part of the process.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the role of QA in cloud migration and the required QA activities to smooth out this complicated transition.
Defining the value of cloud migration testing
According to the AXIM survey, 50% of cloud migration projects collapse or slow down. Among the reasons, 56% of respondents stated compliance and security risks, 55% — the lack of a clearly defined business case, 44% — insufficient planning. Unfortunately, the list doesn’t end there, problems associated with this transition waylay at every turn. A wrong strategy, a lack of thorough planning, skills gap, performance issues, or business downtime are bumps in the road that can also hamper success.
Therefore, to prevent any delays and outages, companies can support the migration process with QA activities. When performed from the earliest SDLC stages, QA helps ensure confidence in data, avoid expensive last-minute fixes, and ensure business continuity. Ongoing monitoring and optimization are of high importance, as they help cope with subsequent challenges, such as performance problems. In addition, when issues are addressed from the beginning of the process, the price of fixing them is low.
Step 1. Preparing for migration testing
When a strong QA team, led by proficient management, embarks on this complex transformation, the initial focus lies on preparation. This pivotal stage ensures that both data and software are adequately primed for subsequent alterations. During these preliminary activities, the engineers:
- Delve into specifics of the cloud platform to create accurate test design and test strategy.
- Analyze the software and data to eradicate inconsistencies, duplicates, or errors, ensuring data cleanliness from the outset. Additionally, specialists should oversee the accurate placement of information from the source system into the target system to ensure precise migration.
- Define the scope of areas that should be tested, write holistic test cases that encompass potential risks, and prepare automated scripts to speed up the process and increase testing accuracy.
- Review system interconnections to avoid any compatibility issues.
- Determine software performance standards before the actual process in order to compare them afterwards and enhance, if necessary.
Such a proactive approach increases confidence in success and facilitates easier management of various issues that may appear.
Step 2. Supporting migration itself
During the active phase, software testing engineers continuously monitor the process to detect any issues and quickly address them. They also specifically work with data — take a sample of it and compare it with the corresponding data in the target system after migration, which is especially beneficial for extensive data amounts.
Step 3. Assisting with subsequent QA activities
After migration, QA engineers perform a vast scope of verifications to ensure robust and failsafe software operation in a new environment.
- Functional testing
QA engineers’ main task is to check that after the migration all system features operate in line with specifications and seamlessly meet expectations of the target audience. When performing end-to-end assessment of all software workflows, QA specialists make sure that the IT product’s operation hasn’t deteriorated, the data has been transferred fully, database structure has been preserved, page layout functions correctly, among other checks.
- Performance testing
Software performance is a crucial factor that influences success in the market. If the application can’t withstand high loads, can’t be scaled when needed, works slowly, or crashes unexpectedly, end users will replace it with a more stable solution.
Therefore, after transferring to a new environment, it’s especially important for the QA engineers to perform diverse server-side verifications, such as load or stress testing, to check software response time, spot any performance bottlenecks, and make sure that performance of the target system remains as high as the source system.
- Integration testing
Many applications nowadays follow a microservices-based architecture, which means that additional QA support is required to ensure that all their multiple modules operate flawlessly and exchange data without any errors. Correct operation with other third-party systems also must be established. That’s where integration testing comes in.
QA engineers define interconnections between modules and with external software to plan the scope, choose a proper integration testing strategy depending on the application size and other characteristics, and verify that in the new environment all integrations still work as defined.
- Cybersecurity testing
QA engineers need to perform cybersecurity testing to identify any loopholes that can be used by malicious intruders and to ensure compliance with industry regulations and cloud security practices.
With penetration testing and vulnerability analysis, QA specialists:
- Make sure that information is only accessed by the right people and is securely stored with appropriate data encryption mechanisms
- Ascertain the application can seamlessly withstand diverse hacker attacks
- Confirm multi-factor authentication functions well
- Gauge potential impacts of detected vulnerabilities
- Provide detailed recommendations on how to improve the guard.
In addition, when QA engineers keep in mind vulnerabilities specific to each cloud platform type, they minimize risks even more and can streamline the testing process.
- Compatibility testing
To ensure successful transformation, QA engineers should also perform compatibility testing. This helps confirm that the application functions equally well on diverse platforms, browsers, and devices, thus ensuring boosted user experience.
- User acceptance testing (UAT)
UAT is another vital check that helps ensure that the IT products fully meet end-user expectations in the new environment and confirm failsafe software operation in any conditions. Therefore, QA engineers perform end-to-end verifications based on real-life user scenarios to verify the entire application flow.
- Data migration testing
A database is a crucial part of any software application. Therefore, it’s especially important for the QA engineers to pay close attention to its verification to make sure the entire contents have been transferred without any losses, duplications, inaccuracies, or ambiguities and that the database structure has been preserved or, if changes are necessary, the application with the novel data structure works in line with requirements.
- Test automation
When supporting the migration process with manual testing only, QA specialists can face diverse obstacles related to an extensive testing scope, problems meeting deadlines, inaccuracy due to human error risks, and cost-efficiency as such testing requires a lot of resources. In addition, some verifications, such as performance testing or security scanning, aren’t suitable for a manual approach because of their repetitive nature, large scope, and frequent deployments in case CI/CD integration is set up.
Thus, QA engineers should consider the introduction of automated testing. With its help, it’s possible to accelerate testing time, easily check data correctness after migration, increase test coverage, and easily cope with boosted QA scope due to good scalability opportunities.
Step 4. Considering the last vital actions for overall success
Ongoing monitoring and optimization are paramount for such complex transformation and software stability in the long run. By establishing real-time monitoring of the entire IT product operation, QA engineers can obtain valuable insights into any changes in performance, including degradation, due to unexpected load spikes; cybersecurity problems due to novel attacks; issues with data integrity; challenges with increased expenses after migration. Being aware of all the above, teams can apply measures to quickly improve the situation and optimize processes.
Nota bene! Cloud migration testing requires specific expertise from all team members — a QA manager, a migration architect, and manual QA and automation specialists — to create a cohesive, fit-for-purpose testing strategy, define interconnections, and ensure high software quality in a novel environment. QA processes must also be well-established to avoid any underperformance. If companies have challenges related to these aspects, there’s always a possibility to involve QA consulting experts who can provide all required support — from reshaping processes to solving challenges with overspending.
Conclusion
Although cloud migration provides multiple business benefits, such as flexibility, cost-reduction, or great recovery opportunities, the process is highly delicate and may fail in half of the cases.
To increase the odds of success and boost confidence, companies may involve QA engineers who can ensure comprehensive testing during all the stages, detect software issues as early as possible, and support IT product operation even after sophisticated transformation. And rely on QA consulting experts, if there’s a need to eliminate QA process bottlenecks and lessen testing expenditure.
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