Quality: The ability of a service or product to meet
customer requirements and create value for that customer. Perceived quality affects customer support more
than any other element. Products and
services must attain a certain minimum level of quality. No other components can make up for a
significant shortfall on this one and the perceived loss of value this can
create.
In business today, “Time to Value” has increasingly become
one of the most significant measures an organization reviews and reports on. Today’s ever more progressively shorter time
scales for this cannot be met without being able to incorporate such practices
as continuous delivery (CD), continuous integration (CI) and continuous
deployment (CD), which all are dependent on our ability to do continuous
testing. As many of you have certainly experienced, this need for speed continues
to be a clear and present danger in our ability to create a high trust culture
where testing and learning from failure is allowed and the time for this is appropriately
built into the project lifecycle.
In order to meet this demand of higher release cadence, we
can incorporate from the best practice discipline of Service Validation and
Testing, the use of test models. These test
models will include a test plan, what is to be tested and test scripts that
define how each element will be tested. This will ensure that testing will be
executed consistently and in a repeatable way that is both effective and
efficient. A vital concept is that we will be able to easily automate these
test models which is a crucial component in being able to achieve CD, CI, CD. Test scripts help to define the release test
conditions and the expected results and test cycles. Test models are well structured, so they
provide traceability back to the stated requirements (from both a business and
IT perspective). They enable
auditability through test execution, evaluation and reporting while ensuring
test elements can be maintained and changed in a controlled and documented
manner.
Some examples of service test models follow:
- Service contract test model: Validates that the customer can use the service to deliver the appropriate value proposition.
- Service contract test model: Validates that the service provider can deliver the service required and expected by the customer.
- Service level test model: Ensures that the service provider can deliver the service level requirements, and the service level requirements can be met in the live environment.
- Service test model: Ensures that the service provider is capable of delivering, operating and managing the new or changed service with the appropriate set of resources.
By
engaging in the use of these models we can ensure that the IT staff
requirements can be delivered before the actual deployment of the service. In this way we can ensure that we have the
right technological facilities in place and skills, knowledge and resources are
available. Supporting processes and resources
are at the appropriate levels and that business and IT continuity has been
considered.
By
engaging in these best practices we can speed up our release cadence while
continuing to ensure quality, reliability and agility in meeting today’s
demands.
For
more information please see http://www.itsmacademy.com/itil-sd/
and http://www.itsmacademy.com/itil-st/
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