Thoughts and Key Strategies for Test Data Management:
Data Acquisition
- Data Profiling and Distribution
- Data that includes confidential or sensitive information can still be shared, however. There are a number of steps researchers can take to protect subjects’ privacy2:
- withholding part of the data
- statistically altering the data in ways that will not compromise secondary analyses
- requiring engineers who seek data to commit to protect privacy and confidentiality
- providing data access in a controlled site, sometimes referred to as a data enclave.
- Data that includes confidential or sensitive information can still be shared, however. There are a number of steps researchers can take to protect subjects’ privacy2:
- How is it provided
- The data have its own device name and data name. The data is stored in a separate file with binary format. Each file has “n” number of columns for data, which generally represent various data features.
- from stored historical data
- Active systems / projects
- from dynamic / fresh data
- Web site/platforms
- Mobile / OTA
- Automated, Tool or Manual Data Preparation
- Automated Accelerators
- Tools such as Informatica, etc.
- Manual teams – most used – and can be up to 40-50% of the project spend
- defining test data
- to be used in a test case,
- copying or creating test data,
- securing or masking sensitive data,
- and so on—are taking up more than half a developers’ and QA team’s time during the testing phase.
- Data Integrity
- Data must be archived in a controlled, secure environment in a way that safeguards the primary data, observations, or recordings.
- The archive must be accessible by engineers analyzing the data, and available to collaborators or others who have rights of access
- Primary data should be stored securely for sufficient time following publication, analysis, or termination of the project.
- The number of years that data should be retained varies from field to field and may depend on the nature of the data and the research.
- Keeping data partitioned and limited to view by assigned groups
- Data Maintenance and Refresh
- When determining the appropriate storage format for data, consider
- What will you do with your data once you acquire it?
- Will you write and read data with the same application?
- How much data will you acquire?
- At what rate will you acquire data?
- Will you need to exchange data with another program?
- Will you need to search your data files?
- When determining the appropriate storage format for data, consider
- Data Governance
- Rules and Policies for testing phases and teams
- How is it used
Without Test Data Management
Define Test Data Requirements
- Tester Efficiency
- Cost Per Test Cycle = $2.7M
- 100 Days, 300 Testers, $90/hour
- 20% application defects due to bad test data
- Application quality
- Cost of a defect found later in the release cycle = XX
With TDM
Define Test Data Requirements
- Improve Tester Efficiency by 30% Improve Tester Efficiency by > 30%
- Cost Per Test Cycle = $1.6M Reduce Testing cycles by > 25%
- 60 Days, 300 Testers, $90/hour Improve application quality by 90% Tester Efficiency
- 90% reduction in test data-related defects
- Cost avoidance
ref: Informatica “Why Do You Need Test Data Management?”
ref: Forrester Report: “http://tealium.com/assets/pdf/Forrester_Boost_Digital_Intelligence.pdf“
Advertisements