BEYOND

Applic ation
T E S TI N G

by Kumudha Sridharan

KUMUDHA Sridharan
Kumudha is the head of Testing Services
at Wipro. She is an acknowledged leader
in the Testing Space with more than 26
years of industry experience and has seen
the entire gamut of Testing Services in
her career by leading Testing Practices
of multiple Business units.

mechanical arms, sitting atop

self-aware robots, simulate the

work of a store manager and staff
in a retail lab. Or, perhaps intelligent
robots and drones combine to

The QA function maintains historical

simulate customers using NFC

repositories of metrics that range from test

tokens for cashless payments.

cases, test suites, data formats, operating

Sounds fancy? Perhaps. However,

environments, defects, changes and

many such scenarios are quickly

the models and standards applied. This

moving from the dominion of

abundance of wealth makes QA a prime

science fiction into reality thanks

candidate for a dramatic disruption triggered

to Cognitive Process Automation

by data-devouring Cognitive Computing.

(CPA) - an integration of Robotic

For decades, ever since Michael Fagan

Process Automation (RPA), Artificial

published a paper on Design and Code

Intelligence and Machine Learning,

Inspections in 1976, and, Glenford Myers

and Data Analytics. We believe that

published his Software Reliability Principles

these technologies will change

and Practices, not much has changed about

the behavior of the IT industry with

application testing techniques. However,

Quality Assurance (QA) baked into

Cognitive Computing can stretch the QA

every aspect of the implementation.

horizons well beyond the existing paradigm.

WINSIGHTS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
BEYOND Application TESTING

magine a world where intelligent

QA and
Cognitive
Computing

Ne w tools in
the QA arsenal
There are two exciting AI technology vectors
that are influencing the practice of QA and
equipping it with new firepower:
The development of algorithms, pattern

recognition and the methodologies around data

Optimize testing: Todays statistical

analytics have taken major strides.

techniques that are applied to optimize testing,

02

Autonomic Healing and Predictive

tend to become inadequate especially when

Analytics: Advances in ML and NLP

changes to applications are frequent and in

that provide simple, time and effort optimized

the context where large assets already exist.

solutions to complex problems.

Manual intervention becomes problematic

Both have not received adequate attention

and poses a major challenge to QA. Cognitive

in QA. But the two have the ability to inject

Computing, that uses continuous learning

intelligence dynamically into QA systems

systems, can be applied to dynamic,

that have already been strengthened and

risk-based testing, solving the problem.

made reliable over decades of use. QA

Improve defect management: Defect

can fix the data (sources, types, extraction,

management is time-consuming and it

sample size, labels, etc.) and cognitive

takes enormous effort to accurately identify,

systems can continue to use the data to train

isolate and fix defects -- typical ones being

the system and continuously improve quality

tickets raised by users for IT applications.

levels. This is done to:

Applying learning-based systems, which

Pro-actively monitor the health of an

look for patterns in the past and leverage

application: Using Cognitive Computing, the

them, is the equivalent of making ticketing

health of an application can be pro-actively

systems intelligent.

monitored by a variety of bots. The bots

Enable self-healing: Cognitive Computing

observe patterns in the data, check on trends

can be used to identify situations where

and then use algorithms, models to predict

self-healing processes can be developed

the impact of an application on related

and applied. This would eliminate a huge

infrastructure, along with the allied risks and

amount of effort that current QA systems

the vulnerabilities.

necessarily entail.

WINSIGHTS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
BEYOND Application TESTING

01

Cognitive Automation:

COG
com Nit
put ive
ing

There are six areas of QA where Cognitive

Computing must be applied to create
noteworthy difference:

01
02

04

Predicting qualit y

Pre venting qualit y

degradations

Diagnosing and
cl assif ying defects

05

03
Detecting qualit y issues

Remediating /
Self-healing

06
Re-validating

Dont reinvent
the wheel
make it turn faster with
Cognitive Computing

he essence of using Cognitive

Computing is to ensure that

quality is baked into every point

in the lifecycle of an application
starting from the design of
new applications. Can machine

Instead, the focus must be on

intelligence be used to identify

reducing the amount of work that

areas that need attention even

goes into QA, reducing clutter and

before they are created? That

make QA rise to the challenge of

would be the ideal deployment

real-time business needs. Today,

of Cognitive Systems in QA.

Cognitive Computing provides QA

The purpose is not to re-invent

the opportunity to look at each area

the wheel. QA as a practice has

of application development and

had the opportunity to mature over

re-think quality at every stage in

several decades. Why waste that?

a holistic manner.

http://ssltest.cs.umd.edu/
class/fall2006/cmsc838p/
VandV/fagan.pdf

ii
A well-accepted theory in
QA is the need to optimize
existing test cases than to
build new ones

WINSIGHTS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
BEYOND Application TESTING

The essence of using Cognitive

Computing is to ensure that
qualit y is baked
into every point
in the lifecycle
of an application

DO BUSINESS BETTER
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IND/BRD/JUN 2016 AUG 2017