October 24, 2018, by Riz Ahmed

Testing Campus Solutions

A number of teams are working together to ensure that Campus Solutions is ready to be rolled out across the University from the end of December. In this blog post we want to give you an understanding of the intensive testing process.

The project team have been busy detailing the specification of the system and designing it. The design is approved by key business users in the University. Once the design is approved, the functionality is developed by the Development team.

Kieran Brennan, Testing Project Manager, said: “The dedicated Testing team undertake rigorous testing of all new functionality within the system after it is developed. This team consists of approximately 30 colleagues who work very closely with the business users. They translate the business process into realistic tests to ensure the system works as it should when it is launched.”

Here is an insight into the comprehensive testing steps that the team are working through:

1. Unit Testing – In this initial test, the code, configuration, Oracle functions, data handling and security of the functionality are reviewed and tested by the developer.

2. Functional Acceptance Testing (FAT) – This involves analysing the original requirements and running tests to make sure each of them has been delivered by the developer.

3. Business Acceptance Testing (BAT) – After the functionality has passed FAT, it is given to the business user for them to run tests on how the process will be run. This is where the business checks that the functionality works as the University expects it to and nothing has been missed.

4. End-to-end testing – 15 different student types across the student lifecycle have been identified at the University. In this test, the functionality is tested across as many varied circumstances as possible to ensure it works with every student type. Connections and data transfers to other University systems are also tested here.

5. Regression testing – As new functionality is brought into the system, it is important to ensure that existing functionality continues to work. This testing stage ensures that new and existing functionality works in harmony together.

6. Performance testing – This assesses the performance of the functionality in terms of speed, scalability and stability. Performance testing ensures the system can cope with events such as confirmation and clearing and start of session when system usage is very high.

7. Penetration testing – It is important to ensure that the functionality and the system as a whole has the best security standards to withstand any malicious attacks, such as viruses or worms. The servers and network that the system will be running on are also tested. Specialist external companies are used to ‘attack’ the system and provide recommendations to improve security.

In all of the tests highlighted above, if the functionality fails a specific test this is called a ‘defect’. This is then passed back to the developer to resolve and put through the testing cycle again.

This comprehensive testing and resolution procedure helps to ensure the system is robust enough for all our staff and students to use. It will allow us to replace Saturn so we can continue University operations as normal and move to a more secure, compliant and capable student records system.

Here are photos of just some of the testing team….

 

 

 

We would like to thank everyone involved for their considerable efforts in testing the new system.

If you have any questions regarding Campus Solutions please email campussolutions@nottingham.ac.uk for a prompt response.

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn