The Importance of Testing

As most everyone knows, when a system is implemented properly a lot of time went into making sure it has been thoroughly tested before going "live" with it. Every phase has it's importance, but testing is one of those very special tasks that has to be done thoroughly and deliberately. Usually, when a project is getting toward the end, the temptation is to cut back the testing phase and simply deliver the system as it stands. This can be due to cost / time overruns or simply that everyone is tired at this point.

We firmly believe that no system should be put into production until it's been fully tested, signed off and works as advertised as defined in the requirements and design. That said we help plan this phase out during the project, as well as test along the way, so when we reach this very important phase it's not cut short.

Phase 6 - System Testing

The testing phase answers the question, "Did the system deliver the required solution?". This phase validates that the solution developed met the stated objectives.  During the test phase the system is not only being tested, debugged and re-factored, the system documentation is also being written. Because the system is being configured to the specification of a user, this must be documented for the users. For users to really understand the system configuration it is important to document the configuration changes at this stage so the documentation will be ready during the implementation phase for reference.

There are 4 Types of incremental tests that are performed during this phase: Unit Test, String Test, Full System / User Test and Stress Test. All pieces of the testing are important for the prime reason that the configuration has to match the business for the system to work properly in the warehouse. The Unit and String tests are more technical in nature focusing on the the system functions themselves working while the Full System / User test is to see how the system functions for the users in the environment. The stress is the last kind of testing to see what kind of load the system can handle with the delivered configuration.