There is no association that can continue on the same pattern of services. It has to change constantly as it is the key factor to the formation and success of any association. In a similar fashion, there is a constant change in financial Industry and it’s because of this constant change, IT companies have to prefer a complicated design to develop financial applications to ensure the application runs in a desired secure manner.
Any financial error is always the critical one. Workflow of every Financial Application is always going to be complex. There is no association which will tolerate any financial bug or error in their application. This is the part where an association needs software testing and quality assurance. If finances are involved in any application, guidelines have to be followed strictly. Quality assurance and Software testing play a vital role in assuring the quality of banking application. Both testers and developers of financial applications should have a good understanding of finance and complete domain knowledge as well.
Most of the financial applications have different QA and software testing necessities. A tester should have a proper domain knowledge in which the financial application is based on. For Example, processing insurance claims, online/mobile banking, trading accounting etc. A tester can only proceed with testing activities if he/she has a good knowledge of the flow.
One of the most important steps is to make a test plan. In that very plan, it states how various testing techniques such as functional, user acceptance, product, performance, and security testing must be performed. Specialized testing services can also be used if the application flow is very complex such as compliance testing, regulatory testing Data Warehouse testing etc.
1. A tester should involve in projects from early stages
In my whole testing career and as per my understanding, requirements are developed not collected. Firstly, Necessities and requirements are discussed at the customer side, then at the company or Vendor side and the communication continues for further necessities to work on. A tester has to be part of the whole communication or should have a check on it from the beginning. For Example, A Health insurance application may have separate modules for transfers, Fee Module, Finance, bill payments, Claims Payments Etc.
Peer Business Analysts, Development leads, QA Engineers and all the stakeholders review the product delivered after collecting requirements. They go through all the requirements so that neither new workflows nor existing business workflow is violated. They all make it sure that the scenarios are implemented in such a way that all requirements from client side are covered. Business scenarios should also cover the main flow of the application. High-level scenarios also called as business scenarios. After that Business Analyst reviews these Business Scenarios to make it sure that all of the Business Requirements are fulfilled. High-level scenarios are made because they are relatively easy for BAs to review them.
2. Thorough understanding of domain as well as work flow of application
A tester must be aware of all the documents related to the project as well as the requirements. If a tester will have good knowledge of the documents and will be clear about each and every requirement only then he will be able to cover every scenario. A tester should have those SME skills which will help him to work together with BAs and Programmers. It will all help testers to create a mindset which will help them further in testing Financial Application.
3. To cover all the possible scenarios
The third point is the test cases. According to me, it is the most important part as far as Financial Applications, Automated Payment Processing Systems are concerned. More Pledge and Discipline is needed while creating test cases for banking application and even more commitment is needed after creating test cases because requirements keep on changing over time and test cases need to be updated as per the updated requirements. QA team has to run impact analysis to uncover the parts or zones which can be impacted the most because of the defect fixes. With the help of impact analysis, few more test cases can also be made to cover the impacted areas. The process is also called selective re-testing because this process focuses on reuse of pre-existing test cases which are already executed.
4. Importance of Performance and Security testing
As we all know that financial applications are becoming more and more API centric and these days Banks have their own Applications running on the back of APIs, Performance and Security testing are most important. Commonly, performance testing is done to check if the application, infrastructure can handle load which is fine but the code should also be written keeping performance in mind. There are lots of examples where the application is made high performing from load viewpoint but the code of the application is not performing. Security testing is one of the most important points to consider while proceeding for banking domain application testing. It makes banking applications more secure by facing and recognizing security susceptibilities. Security testing also makes sure that application fulfills Industry and Federal standards. Any web susceptibility can reveal or leak sensitive information or data to an attacker or an invader and Security testing makes it sure that it will not happen with help of standards like OWASP (The Open Web Application Security Project).
5. Importance of User Acceptance Testing
User acceptance testing (UAT) can play important role in Efficient and Effective financial application testing.
In general, Development or testing of financial applications (High Performing, Reliable, Secure and Functional) is not teamwork but multi-functional teamwork in a healthy cooperated agile and technical environment. To help Testing, Development, Support team and the management to make the right decisions at a right time, good testing psychology, great communication skills and last but not the least functional testing skills is a must for any software tester testing banking domain app.
