A Risk-Based Approach to End-to-End System Testing

You've performed unit, integration, functional, performance, security, and usability testing. Are you ready to go live with this new application? Not unless you've performed end-to-end system testing. What's so important about endto-end testing? It is the only testing that exercises the system from the users'point of view. Marie Was presents a case study detailing the introduction of a new insurance product in her organization. Their first step was to create an endto-end system diagram showing how transactions and data flowed through the system. Next, the risk associated with each of those flows was evaluated. Test cases, and their order of execution, were derived based on the risks identified through interviews of subject matter experts and past experience. A "subway map" identifying the various flows was created and color-coded to help nontechnical business stakeholders understand the testing approach. This method was highly effective in both planning the tests and communicating the approach to important stakeholders.

• Create an end-to-end system diagram
• Create a "subway map" to help stakeholders understand critical functionality
• Learn a highly successful, customer oriented testing process