By Thomas van Ingen & Dimitri Fioole
Sounds familiar? You got yourself a Salesforce implementation and think: I want to automate my testing. Provar is the perfect tool for that, but who is going to maintain the testing? How do you guarantee the quality of testing? These are all more than fair questions! Fortunately, we have good (and new!) news: from now on you can have your regression tests performed periodically by Nekst IT. We call it 4DM.
4DM stands for the 4Ds + Managed Services. 4D is the standardized process for developing a test automation framework and its implementation for our customers. A quick tutorial for those new to this field.
4DM stands for:
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- Discover: Here we assess whether the Provar framework fits the Salesforce solution you have.
- Design: here we design the test framework and demonstrate that the Provar solution works by means of a demo.
- Develop: in this phase we build the test framework and automate the agreed test scripts.
- Deliver: the moment we deliver the framework to you, the customer.
- Managed Services: in this phase, Nekst IT runs the tests at the agreed times and we deliver a report after each run.
So we now add an ‘M’ to the 4Ds: Managed Services. We can hear you thinking: but what is the added value of this? Seems like a legitimate question to us. In short, it means that we run and report on a number of predefined set of test scripts for you. For example, we do this every day, every week or every month: just what we have agreed with you.
You will therefore receive a standard test report from us with which tests have been carried out and which have been passed and which have not. In the latter case, we can of course also help you make improvements in your implementation. This is not (yet) a standard part of 4DM, but it’s possible.
Is This Unique?
Yes and no. Of course, automated regression tests are already being performed and automated on Provar, often by our customers themselves. But experience shows that regression tests are often of insufficient quality. And sometimes they aren’t there at all. How is that possible? We suspect due to the lack of time with our customers: they are forgotten or there is too little knowledge and skills in-house to automate them properly.
Because testing takes time, even if it is automated. The tool we mentioned at the beginning of this article, Provar, is wonderful. But you will have to invest a lot of time to know what you can do with it and how to run tests. Compare it to Photoshop: it’s a great photo editing program, but before you know exactly what all those different buttons do, you have a lot of hours of slogging.
And what can be difficult for a customer is the question of whether the regression tests should be automated on Salesforce or whether Provar should be used for this. And so understandably what often happens is that regression testing is only done sparsely after completion of a project.
Solution
But we have found a solution for that: 4DM. This means that we remain on board even after the project has been completed to perform your regression tests. We ensure a successful implementation of Provar, periodically run the test set and report the results. This way we relieve you completely and you don’t have to worry about anything.
Curious about what Nekst IT can do for you with the 4DM approach? Call or send one of us an email. You can reach us at: Dimitri Fioole or Thomas van Ingen. We are happy to help you!
