A dedicated development instance is used for testing. Another instance is set up for cutover to be the production instance that will run the firm’s operations. Companies can use conference room pilot (CRP) sessions where conference rooms are designated as temporary locations to support development and testing, and employees can execute transactions with the proposed system configurations. As transactions are executed, expected results can be compared to actual results. Differences between the two will identify areas where the system or the expectations might need to be tweaked. A number of CRPs may be warranted to address different business units, system modules, or geographical locations. Specific types of testing include:
• Unit testing - Testing small increments of functionality as discrete steps in a business process or testing a single development object to the requirements in a functional specification.
•…show more content… • Customer acceptance testing - Usually a final round of integration testing in which key users develop realistic business scenarios that represent how the system will need to work after go-live. The users are tasked with testing the system to their approval or acceptance. This milestone is critical to proceeding with go-live cut-over activities.
• Security testing - Testing all of the user roles and authorizations that are being set up in the system. These tests include both positive and negative tests to demonstrate that allowed functionality can be accessed or that unauthorized access is appropriately denied.
• Performance load testing - Business transaction volumes and concurrent user activities are tested with expected peak load (and then some) to confirm that response times are acceptable. These stress tests must pass predetermined acceptance criteria or performance thresholds.
