Testing Services Center of Excellence (COE)

Recently the emphasis on improving SAP™ Testing processes & workflows has increased as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), IT governance initiatives, International Organization for Standardization (ISO) implementations, and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) process improvements. Both the public and private sectors are now being required to implement quality assurance and testing services within their organizations.

For example, SOX requires annual tests of the effectiveness of internal controls. Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers are now required to sign off on the effectiveness of their organizations’ internal control systems. Organizations must now demonstrate to auditors the effectiveness of their internal control systems in order to validate their compliance with SOX regulations.

In addition to regulations, there are a few things to consider when there are no sound SAP testing processes or testing workflows in place:

• Finding and fixing a software problem after delivery is often 100 times more expensive than finding and fixing it during the requirements and design phase
• Software projects spend about 40 to 50 percent of their effort on avoidable rework
• About 80 percent of avoidable rework comes from 20 percent of the defects
• About 80 percent of the defects come from about 20 percent of the modules of code
• About 90 percent of production downtime comes from about 10 percent of the defects
• QA conducted peer reviews catch about 60 percent of defects and at a much lower cost

Where to Turn for Reliable Testing Services?

CIBER can assist your organization with improving your testing practices and centralizing some or all test-related activities, by the CIBER SAP Testing Services Center of Excellence (COE). Using best practices, there are four primary models for establishing a Testing Services COE within your organization, each with a different role and set of responsibilities. CIBER can guide your organization toward successfully establishing this mission-critical capability within your organization for SAP and non-SAP systems, often layering one model on top of another to establish a Testing Services COE appropriate for the size and complexity of your organization and its IT systems.

Typically there are four approaches or levels of maturity in a Test Services COE:

• The basic COE sets standards for testing performed by testers on project teams
• In addition to the basic COE role, the role evolves toward establishing and maintaining common infrastructure for testing (e.g., test environment, test data, documentation templates)
• Eventually, the COE is positioned and prepared to perform independent testing to supplement testing performed by development project team members
• Finally, the mature Testing Services COE performs all testing except for developer testing

As your Testing Services COE continues to evolve, CIBER consultants can continue to provide additional processes and methods to establish a last-line-of-defense model within your Testing Services COE. This more advanced form of the Testing Services COE can provide a final check on software quality. This approach is most appropriate for applications or environments with especially high-quality standards and high-reliability goals for production environments.

With CIBER’s guidance, your Testing Services COE will be able to loan testers out to projects and work on them just as any team member would. With CIBER’s assistance, flexible-resource-pool Testing Services COE’s can also be structured, managed, run and staffed by your organization’s onshore resources and/or CIBER’s own comprehensive offshore Quality Assurance and Testing Services COE.

Deliverables

CIBER’s SAP Testing Services COE has achieved success for our customers’ SAP systems by reducing SAP implementation and upgrade risks, focusing manual and automated testers for better business value, building reusable SAP testing libraries, meeting aggressive testing timelines, increasing the quality of documented test cases/scripts/results and by building and executing suites of SAP-oriented manual or automated test cases and scripts within project timelines.

CIBER is committed to providing the best in quality assurance and test services to our customers. We offer comprehensive solutions to support projects from their inception to completion, including implementations, upgrades and customizations of SAP Testing processes, methods and automated test tools.

Testing Workflow Solution Features offered by CIBER’s SAP Testing Services COE include:

• Test Strategy developed at project inception addressing governance requirements
• Test Management: defect management, reporting and metrics
• Executing quality assurance (requirements, configuration, testing, etc.) at the inception of the project and continuing throughout the project
• Focusing on getting the business requirements right
• Decomposing the testing process into its distinct phases to focus on quality and defect prevention
• Documenting and implementing proven and repeatable testing processes
• Managing and conducting timely and consistent testing activities

• Integrating with project management processes to ensure control, accountability and communication throughout the engagement
• Test Architectural Development identifying: specific manual and automated Test Plans, development of functional test scenarios, cases or scripts needed for critical business processes, User Acceptance Test Plans and coordination, development and implementation of automated test processes and tools for efficient regression testing based upon a sound Risk Management approach
• Implementing Automated Performance Test Tools, Performance Test Requirements, Performance Test Plans and Automated Scripts for: volume, load, stress, production monitoring, etc.

As a Hewlett Packard Software Partner, CIBER has the skills, resources and experience to assist our customers with all aspects of implementing and maintaining HP Software (Mercury) Automated Test Tools for their Testing Services Centers of Excellence (COE). Ensuring that our customers’ HP Software Automated Test Tool(s) technology investments meet the needs of their business and deliver the results that they demand is our specialty.

CIBER can assist your organization by providing: sales, installation, maintenance and upgrade services, training, automated testing development and execution for:

• HP Software Quality Center for SAP
• HP Software QuickTestPro for SAP
• HP Software Performance Center/LoadRunner for SAP
• SAP Test Acceleration and Optimization (TAO) Application for Business Process Testing
• SAP Test Data Migration Server
• SAP Testing Accelerators

CIBER, Inc. has notable experience in providing private industry and government with efficient, cost effective technology training and seminars on effective manual and automated testing management, test architectural design, test case and script development, testing process/workflow implementation, and testing risk management methods and automated tools. CIBER has positioned itself as your best source for training to assist your organization in meeting your goals of achieving best practices in your Testing Services COE.

The Benefits

The results from CIBER’s SAP Testing Services COE for your organization include:

• Reduced total cost of ownership over the lifecycle of production systems
• Higher quality in system deliverables and testing
• Increased speed to production implementations and speed to market timelines
• Compliance with appropriate regulations and standards
• Overcoming skills scarcity or process deficiencies
• Increased user satisfaction with delivered systems in production
• Reduced business risk
• Controlled testing costs by utilizing less labor, efficient automation and/or offshore labor
• Assuring audit or regulatory compliance by using independent testing
• Achieving efficiency and scalability in recurring test cycles

Sound SAP Testing Processes, including improved inspections, manual testing methods and automated testing implementations, result in:

• Fewer defects reaching production
• Fewer problems at go live
• Reduction in business losses and lost opportunities
• Improved SOX regulatory compliance
• Reduced litigation risk exposure
• Reduced system lifecycle maintenance costs
• Improved system performance

Improved results at project delivery for SAP implementation, upgrades or maintenance releases can be achieved while:

• decreasing testing costs for future releases
• developing and maintaining tests by building automation components
• using tools to accelerate accurate testing buildup
• finding and resolving defects earlier
• lowering repair costs

Other benefits include the ability to ensure that desired changes are limited to just the impacted components. Changes can be propagated to impact automated test scripts as they are developed, and then they can be reused for multiple releases. This ability helps improve customer satisfaction while reducing your production support costs.

Why CIBER?

CIBER’s successful approach to SAP Testing Services methods provides clients with a solution specifically focused on their objectives resulting in improved performance at Project Delivery or repetitive maintenance release cycles.

CIBER’s full lifecycle SAP Testing Services approach results in:

• Timely delivery of projects within budget – fewer defects, less rework
• Higher quality project deliverables – fewer missed requirements and fewer defects
• Reduced project timeline and variances – reduced development and test cycle timelines
• Improved project compliance – increased traceability and clear audit trails

CIBER, Inc is an SAP Services Alliance Partner, a Special Expertise Partner to SAP in various industries and an HP Software (Mercury) Partner. CIBER provides specialized SAP Testing Services COE expertise and support to the SAP community utilizing best practices to develop, implement and establish both manual and automated testing throughout the system lifecycle for SAP and non-SAP systems.

CIBER has successfully assisted many organizations with the implementation of automated test tools, automated testing processes, automated test teams and automated test scripts for SAP and non-SAP systems.

With CIBER’s sound approach toward project planning for the implementation of automated testing or enhancements to manual testing methods, success can be achieved. Chartering the implementation of automated testing with a formal project plan and budget can begin to lay the groundwork and carry a strong message from your organization’s management team to the other players. Automated testing should be viewed as an important goal for management.

CIBER’s SAP Testing Services Center of Excellence (COE) can assist your organization in improving manual testing processes to facilitate an easier transition toward implementation of the new automated test tools thus insuring a more efficient automated testing process. Our staff has considerable experience to adequately train everyone in your organization involved with the installation, configuration, maintenance and use of the HP (Mercury) automated test tools. Our approach toward training addresses not only the automated/manual testers, but includes those responsible for managing non-tester resources affected by the automated/manual testing processes or automated test tools.

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