How to Prepare Test Plan and Write Test Cases for ERP Application – ERP Testing Part-2

Let us understand how to prepare a test plan and write test cases for ERP Application. This is part-2 of the ERP testing series. Let’s get started. 

In the previous article of this series, we have seen few key points of ERP like the real meaning of the term ERP, various modules of ERP, the importance of ERP testing, the criticalities of ERP testing and a road-map for the preparation of the ERP testing.

=> Check ERP testing part 1 tutorial here

In this article, we will get into some more practical details on ERP (SAP) Testing like preparing the quality assurance plan, test plan, test suite, test cases and test execution strategy.

This tutorial is a good example of writing a test plan from scratch for any application. We have also provided a sample test suite template for download.

=> Click Here For Complete Test Plan Tutorial Series 

How to Prepare Test Plan and Write Test Cases for ERP Applications

For demonstration purposes, let us assume the ERP application under testing consists of the following modules with some key information about the implementation plan as below.

ERP Name: ABC Manufacturing ERP
Customer Name: XYZ Petrochemicals LLC
Industry Verticals: Manufacturing
Corporate Office: New York
Branch Offices: Los Angeles and Chicago
Production Plant: Houston
Inventory Warehouses: Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago
Total Employees: 2500
System Users: 325
Company Turnover: USD 1M
Departments: Administration, Finance, Accounts, HR, Production, Quality, Stores, Sales, Marketing, Maintenance, Dispatch, Customer Support
Modules: Budget, CRM, Customer, Vendor, Sales, Purchase, Payments, Contracts, Finance, Accounts, Human Capital, Payroll, Production Planning, Project Management, Inventory, Material Management, Work Orders, Fixed Assets, Business Intelligence
Delivery Model: On-Premise and Cloud
Implementation Plan: Requirements Gathering, Business Workflow Analysis, Data Flow Assessment, Customization and Enhancement, Delivery and Rollout, End User Training

Recommended Tool

#1) Oracle NetSuite

Oracle NetSuite offers a Quality Assurance platform that will let you set up inspection plans and effectively track test results. This tool will help you to deliver the highest quality of products. You will be able to centrally manage the list of tests and enforce minimum inspector qualifications.

It provides a number of features and functionalities for test definition, receiving & in-process inspections, and data collection.

Features

• Oracle NetSuite performs real-time processing of inspection results.
• It is a device-agnostic tool and can be used on any browser-based tablet.
• It has features of workflow-based handling of non-conforming materials.
• You can enforce minimum inspector qualifications.

You can see below some of the screenshots of the ERP software application for some important business processes like Sales Order, Customer Financials, Payments Header, Fixed Asset, Employee Management and Sales Report which will give an idea about the criticality and complexity of the ERP testing.

Screenshot 1: Sales Order

Screenshot 2: Sales Order (US)

Screenshot 3: Customer Financials

Screenshot 4: Payments Header (India)

Screenshot 5: Payments Header (US)

Screenshot 6: Fixed Asset (India)

Screenshot 7: Fixed Asset (US)

Screenshot 8: Employee Management

Screenshot 9: Sales Report

ERP QA Plan

Assuring Quality is a major milestone of any ERP implementation project, which consists of the following stakeholders and success depends on dedicated efforts by all as a “Team”.

The stakeholders for the ERP implementation project might be the following:

• Implementation Team – Consists of a team of professionals from ERP Company or from the local implementation partner. Must have implementation expertise.
• Software Vendor – Software suppliers for the operating system, database and other office applications required for ERP.
• Hosting Provider – Hosting providers for servers, networks, internet and intranet infrastructure required for ERP implementation. Must have implementation expertise.
• Business Team – Consists of the business development team or management steering committee.
• Technical Team – The development team or the implementation team to be available throughout the course of the project. Must have implementation expertise.
• Testing Team – The testing team from the ERP Company or from the local partners having expertise on the ERP implementation strategies.
• Customer Team – The end user team or the departmental heads, who have the complete working knowledge of the business process.

As we discussed in the previous tutorial, testing the ERP (e.g SAP) software application is different than testing the other software applications. ERP applications are domain specific and industry-specific. There are a few common modules such as Finance, Accounting, Inventory, Fixed Assets, Sales, Purchases, Human Capital, and Payroll that are available in all ERP systems.

Apart from these common modules, few industrial specific modules are available as per the targeted customers. For example, a “manufacturing ERP” may have a “production planning” module, a “pharma ERP” may have a “doctor-patient” module and an “education ERP” may have a “student” module and so on.

So, the quality factor should be enabled with some pre-defined metrics to be shared well in advance with all the stakeholders in the above list.

To maintain quality, stakeholders are mutually put into service level agreements. All stakeholders as a team should have defined action items and responsibilities with the target dates to achieve the expected quality of statement of work.

ERP Test Plan

The ERP test plan should consist of the following information for an effective and successful implementation.

The test plan has the objectives, quality metrics, features to be tested manually, features to be tested through automation tools, project environment, team infrastructure, resource requirements, testing schedule, testing deliverables, test execution infrastructure, testing framework, assumptions, dependencies, constraints, bug tracking mechanism, bug reporting tools, acceptance criteria, etc.

Given below is the sample test plan for our ERP implementation project for XYZ Petrochemical LLC.

See also – if you need more information on how to write a test plan, please check the following tutorials:

• Write a test plan document from scratch
• Test plan samples and one more here.

Project Description

ABC Manufacturing ERP is an integrated ERP solution for the manufacturing industry. The product consists of core modules like Accounting, Finance, Budget, Inventory, Fixed Assets, Customers, Vendors, CRM, Sales, Purchase, Payments, Contracts, Human Capital, Payroll, Production Planning, Project Management, Inventory, Material Management, Work Orders and Business Intelligence.

The customer’s vertical is into manufacturing and their business is manufacturing petrochemical bi-products and selling them to domestic and international clients. The raw materials are purchased from both domestic and international markets. The company operates from New York, the USA with branches in various parts of the country.

The company also has warehouses in remote locations. The ERP system will be implemented in a centralized location at the corporate premises and connect the other branches, warehouses, production plants, marketing offices from various parts of the Country through Internet, WAN, Wi-Fi, Cloud Infrastructure. The proposed solution supports multiple languages like English (for international customers, Hindi (for IN users), Arabic (for Middle East vendors) and supports multiple currency transactions.

The system also has an E-Commerce customer portal for online sales orders with a credit card payment gateway and a Vendor portal for purchase quotations. There are more than 300 system users going to use the system from various parts of the globe with at least more than 10,000 transactions per day.

Objective

• Identify the modules to be tested manually.
• Identify the modules to be tested through automation tools.
• Define testing strategy, testing scope and testing activities.
• Define testing criteria, assumptions, dependencies and constraints.
• Identify the testing team, their allocation, and their testing schedule.
• Setup manual and automation testing frameworks.
• Setup the testing infrastructure with software and hardware configuration.
• Define the stakeholders of the project for ERP implementation.
• Define communication and escalation mechanisms.
• Define the work environment, task details, and responsibilities.
• Risk management with risk mitigation plans.
• Define test deliverables and reporting tools.

Module wise Features for Manual Testing

• Payment Module (Payment Creation, Approve Payments, Issue Cheques)
• Funding Module (Joint Payments, Approve Joint Payments, Issue Cheques)
• Payroll Module (Payroll Cheques, Issue Cheques)
• Fixed Assets Module (Asset Depreciation, Asset Disposal)

Module wise Features for Automation Testing

• Sales Module (Sales Order, Shipping Sales Order, Backorders, Sales Invoicing)
• Purchase Module (Purchase Contract, Purchase Orders, Purchase Amendments)
• Customer Module (Customer Management, Customer Financials)
• Human Capital Module (Employee Management, Attendance, Loans, Leaves)

Features to be Tested Off Premises

• Functionality Testing: Functional test cases of all the modules that are reviewed and approved.
• Regression Testing: Functional test cases for the customized modules, which are reviewed and approved.
• Smoke Testing: All functional test cases are marked for Sanity, which is reviewed, executed and approved.

Features to be Tested On Premises

• System Testing: All system test cases of every module that are reviewed and approved.
• Integration Testing: All system test cases of every module that are reviewed and approved.
• Performance Testing: All performance test cases that are reviewed and approved.
• Load Testing: All load test cases that are reviewed and approved.
• User Acceptance Testing: All user acceptance testing, which is reviewed and approved.

Features to be Tested on Mobile, Wi-Fi & Cloud

Functionality Testing: All the system test cases of the CRM module, which are reviewed and approved.

Resource Requirements

Testing Schedule

Test Case Execution

Test Coverage

A: Functional Testing, B: System Testing, C: Integrity Testing, D: Security Testing, E: Usability Testing, F: Performance Testing, G: Interface Testing, H: Installation Testing

Deliverables

Risk Management

Issue Tracker

Confluence and JIRA tools are used for issue tracking in the project. JIRA is customized and configured for all the testing team members to escalate issues, as well as report bugs and assign to the concerned development team with the responsibility and target dates.

Quality Metrics

ERP Test Suite

Similar to the normal testing process, the ERP Test Suite is normally prepared as an Excel document. This document controls the complete revision history of the various test suites of all the modules in the ERP application. Test cases for each module, test execution history, list of bugs and the test report history are maintained in an ERP test suite.

For automation testing, the “test scripts” are maintained in the test suite and the related iteration of test execution history is maintained. Depending on the type of testing and the complexity of the test cases, automation test scripts are maintained in the suite which should be designed in such a way for re-usability.

Please find below a snapshot of the ERP test suite in the Excel document

Sample Test Suite Template Download

Given below is a sample test suite template for download. It contains templates for revision history, test reports, bug reports, smoke test cases, and regression test cases

=> Click here to Download ERP test suite template.

ERP Test Cases

Apart from functional test cases, regression test cases, sanity/smoke test cases, ERP Testing requires other types of test cases for installation testing, configuration testing, implementation testing, adaptability testing, network testing, server testing, offline testing, remote testing, multi-currency testing, multi-language testing, device testing, intranet testing, real-time testing, etc.

Most important, ERP being a centralized automated solution, being accessed by multiple users concurrently online in real time, which involves a financial transaction, each and every test cases should be written with a lot of dedicated effort and real-time data.

Also, the test execution status should be updated as “Pass” after verifying the output data with the predefined real-time data. So, the test cases should always have a column for “test data” and “output data”.

Sample Test Scenario

Find below a sample test case for our ERP demonstration This test case may consist of a lot of small test cases which can be segregated and maintained, but for demo purposes, it’s combined with a single test case.

Conclusion

ERP Testing has a lot of risks and complexities compared to any software/product testing. Also, managing quality metrics in ERP implementation projects requires a lot of attention, dedicated effort and teamwork from multiple stakeholders.

Testing professionals need to understand the difference between the quality of the product and the quality of implementation. ERP testing requires trusted sponsorship on time and budget from management and the customers. Testing should be done by the ERP expert team and should not be allocated to an inexperienced team.

It is very important to use only the proven right process, methodologies, approaches, and automated tools. We should not assume that “automation” completely replaces the “manual” testing, but should also not compromise on using the required testing infrastructure and framework. Don’t underestimate the time required to collect live real data from the customers.

Let us know if you have any doubts or questions on ERP or in particular SAP Testing. Please go through the other articles in this series by clicking on the link given below. We would love to hear your feedback in the comments section below.

=> Visit Here For Complete Test Plan Tutorial Series

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