Why is efficient Test Data Management so important?

Test data management is important because it affects the software development lifecycle. It will affect the velocity at which your tests run, and it will also affect the cost of your tests.

When you have poorly managed test data, you are wasting time and money. Your code is not as clean, and there’s a greater chance that bugs could slip through the cracks. You could also be paying for unnecessary testing (if you’re paying someone to run your unit tests). The costs of inefficient test data management can be significant.

The most important benefit of efficient test data management is faster, better software delivery.

A lot of the time software developers and testers don’t think of test data management as a separate issue—it should be treated just like code and unit testing, but here’s why it’s worth paying attention to:

Test data is a huge part of the entire software development lifecycle, from concept through delivery. When you have good test data management, you can speed up your software delivery by reducing the amount of time spent creating or updating it. At the same time, you can ensure that there are no issues with accuracy or coverage because you won’t waste resources writing new tests at every step.

It’s also critical for work to stay in compliance with regulations such as PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), which requires companies to limit access to personal information and requires regular security updates. If you haven’t already documented how your company uses test data in its development process, now is a great time to start thinking about what needs to be done.

While this is the most obvious benefit, it is far from the only one.

Greater cost savings are, of course, a major benefit. Less time spent on data management activities results in more time spent on testing. But that’s not all. Benefits include improved developer productivity, more reliable test results, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction—not to mention better compliance with regulations like GDPR and PCI-DSS. Just imagine what could be achieved with that extra time!

More efficient management of test data can also make it easier for organizations to move toward continuous delivery. By making data available through an API rather than manually extracting it from production systems or masking it each and every time it is required for non-production environments, teams can speed up the delivery process significantly.

In addition to accelerating the release cycle, TDM also improves automation by increasing the number of scenarios that can be tested automatically as well as improving the reliability of automated tests by ensuring they have access to high quality data sets which have been created especially for their purpose—rather than relying on re-purposed data from a source system which could lead to incorrect results being returned or even prevent the test from running at all due to data quality issues leading to failures in dependent services such as those responsible for identity verification or fraud prevention.

Automated provisioning of test data sets means that they will be created quickly and consistently.

Automated provisioning of test data sets means that they will be created quickly and consistently. Data sets can be created easily, and they will be the same each time they are created.

When developers aren’t waiting on data, they have more time to focus their efforts on writing software and catching bugs.

Efficient data management means that developers are able to focus their efforts on writing software and catching bugs.

When they aren’t waiting on data, developers can write more code. They can test more often. And most importantly, they can catch bugs—and fix them—earlier in the development cycle. This results in higher quality code, and greater efficiency in the overall software lifecycle.

And when TDM testing is efficient, it eliminates a major source of developer frustration: waiting around for data to be ready or available before they can begin writing their own code or testing someone else’s work.

This increased efficiency means less money spent on setting up and maintaining test environments, not to mention the cost of lost labor while they’re waiting.

TDM (Test Data Management) is a time consuming and costly process that can be easily overlooked as a lesser priority than testing itself. It can be tempting to simply give testers whatever data they need and move on, but this creates serious problems down the road.

TDM is a complex and important part of the software development lifecycle that requires more than just throwing some data together. Your testers need data that matches what your customers will use in real life, down to address details, phone numbers, etc—that’s a lot of information to keep track of!

Finding bugs before release also reduces the risk of major security issues leading to compliance violations or losses of customer trust.

Finally, finding bugs before release also reduces the risk of major security issues leading to compliance violations or losses of customer trust. This is an important point for any company in highly regulated industries such as banking, healthcare, and insurance. While we’ve all heard about the big data breaches that made headlines at major retailers and credit bureaus (including ones with very sophisticated IT organizations), you don’t want your brand to be on the front page next time.

Data sets that are consistent across environments and test runs improve reliability in automated testing, helping organizations move to a continuous delivery model safely.

Continuous delivery is an approach to software development that is characterized by fast, incremental releases that enable organizations to bring new features and functions to market quickly. To ensure the quality of these updates, organizations must have a strong program for software testing. Unfortunately, test data management can be a huge impediment to both continuous delivery and test automation.

The issues arise when teams rely on manual processes or outdated tools for managing their test data. The cost of provisioning and managing test data manually increases rapidly as applications become more complex, which means that teams are forced to spend more time maintaining the accuracy of their datasets rather than actually testing new features.

In Conclusion

Software testing is key to any successful software project. Without it, companies run the risk of delivering subpar products which leave users disappointed. For that reason, a business should understand the importance of test data management, and the best way to do this is by looking at the advantages of test data management.