SaaS Testing: Challenges, Tools and Testing Approach

Here is a detailed overview of SaaS Testing:

To begin implementing any form of testing methods, whether it is traditional or new methods, we need to know every detail of that particular testing method.

This is required as proper knowledge and understanding because it not only helps in implementing the testing method for our application in a better way, but it also allows us to get the most out of that testing tool.

You may have heard about “SaaS testing”. Well, SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) are the 3 categorized models of Cloud Computing.

SaaS Testing

In this article, we will answer a few basic questions which will help you understand the SaaS form of testing and also cover its process, implementation, challenges, and many more such aspects.

So, let’s get started with a very basic and initial question:

What is SaaS?

Termed as Software as a Service and easily available to customers over the Internet, SaaS helps organizations bypass the need to run and install applications on their respective computers and in turn, reduces the expense of hardware acquisition, installation, maintenance, and support costs.

Further Read => Software-as-a-service (SaaS) Meaning & Examples

What is SaaS Testing?

With the advancement of the Cloud Computing concept in industry and research communities, SaaS platforms have also acquired a remarkable place by providing diverse services on the cloud. After the completion of the development process of the application, SaaS application testing comes into play where the whole duration of the testing cycle is decided on the basis of the type of software opted for service.

Moreover, to say it in a definition format, SaaS platform testing is defined as the method of assuring the quality of the software by undergoing different validation activities.

This involves testing performance, security, data integration, scalability, reliability, etc. Cisco WebEx and Google Apps, among others, are a few well-known examples of SaaS applications that are easily accessible on the internet and do not require any installation.

In this competitive world, enterprises are continuously moving towards cloud computing and software delivery with SaaS models. The benefits it provides, like on demand service and pay per use, are the major reasons behind it.

Listed below are some more reasons behind opting for SaaS app testing:

1. Improved reliability and scalability as well as good availability
2. Reduction in the cost of software deployment and maintenance
3. Easy fault recovery
4. Quick deployment of software with higher accessibility
5. Pay per use
6. Continuous upgrade testing in case of addition of new tenants
7. Internal system dependencies are reduced to many levels
8. Flexibility in resource scaling and pricing
9. SaaS applications update and upgrade (new releases) easily and become available to the customers.

From the above discussion, it can be easily understood that SaaS application Testing is basically the validation of SaaS applications with respect to various components including security, compatibility, and performance. SaaS testing is considered to provide the fastest and most effective products, but it requires a lot of quality assurance at a number of steps.

SaaS vs Traditional testing:

Although SaaS application testing has few similarities in its approach to traditional testing, SaaS is considered harder than traditional testing.

Let’s see some factors to justify this statement:

• Products are delivered at a much faster rate, thus Quality Assurance has become a factor of concern
• It requires ample business and domain knowledge to deal with configurable and non- configurable components of SaaS applications
• SaaS application testers undergo comprehensive testing in order to enable users to utilize all the benefits of such applications
• The test environment should support automatic deployment and execution as well as validation of the application
• SaaS testing also has advantages over traditional testing like:
  • Cost of maintenance and up-gradation of application is lower
  • Less risk is involved, thus there is more focus on the adoption of new innovative ideas
  • Pay per use
  • Easily accessed over the internet directly without any software installation.

Steps to SaaS Implementation and Best Practices

Now that we understand the basics of SaaS, let’s move further and understand its Development Lifecycle. Before that, you need to know some important parameters that need to be considered.  We have provided the steps that are required to implement SaaS effectively.

The list below will help you get a better idea of the steps to be followed:

1. There should be a clear idea about the reason for opting for SaaS implementation by a business
2. A Clear understanding of the business is a requirement, as is identifying the goals at an early stage to help achieve better results
3. Plan steps and procedures in advance in order to satisfy the business requirements and the reasons for implementing SaaS
4. The team involved in this implementation should have developers with in-depth knowledge of the SaaS concept along with a better understanding of the industry best practices. In order to get the best result, the team member should have expertise in multiple technologies
5. The team should also have an IT professional in order to avoid situations of little support and documentation at the time of delivering software services
6. The terms of the Service Level Agreement should be clearly understood before signing any contract
7. When the infrastructure is built, keep a few major parameters in mind like scalability, security, network bandwidth, backup, and recovery, etc.
8. Planning for disaster recovery should be done to ensure that it does not become the reason for the discontinuation of the application
9. A suitable customer support call center should be established to deal with queries after the delivery of the software services.

Along with the above points, there are a few more factors like payment criteria, trained employees, exit categories, documentation, and more that should be considered before implementing SaaS.

Understand the steps involved in the SaaS development life cycle in brief:

Agile development methodology is used in most cases but it also depends on the particular requirement of the project. As it is displayed in the figure, six phases are involved in the SaaS development life cycle.

Listed below are the phases with a brief introduction:

1. Envisioning Phase business needs and opportunities are identified here as a result of various market research.
2. Platform Evaluation Phase ensures proper examination as well as successful implementation of planned features like performance, security, scalability, disaster recovery, etc.
3. Planning Phase includes formalization of all the information gathered like, a project plan, specifications, staff, etc. into the technical specifications required by the developers.
4. Subscribing Phases important decisions, including architecture, pricing, and disaster recovery strategies, are finalized to ensure high availability of the service.
5. Developing Phase as the name suggests, the development environment is set up, including various forms of testing. SaaS applications are expected to always work under heavy loads, thus SaaS load and performance testing play an important role.
6. Operations Phase services will be deployed during this phase. However, frequent updates and security checks are required of the application in order to enhance the user experience and reduce support issues.

 The above explanation gives you a brief idea of what’s behind the SaaS development lifecycle. However, different projects chose different methodologies and can have variations in their lifecycle.

Understanding the Focus of SaaS Testing Methodology 

SaaS testing always takes centre stage and uses methods that ensure the application built on this model is working as expected.

Applications, Infrastructure, and Networks are considered the core components of SaaS testing. There are multiple key areas on which SaaS testing focuses.

Listed below are a few of them:    

• White and Black box testing as part of Component testing
• Functional testing to rigorously check whether the application is working as per the requirements
• Integration testing is performed to check the integration of the SaaS system with others
• Perform exploratory testing on new test cases
• Test network security, security threats, integrity and accessibility as part of infrastructure and security testing
• Ensure quality SaaS connectivity as well as testing the user interface with respect to portability and compatibility
• Any upgrade, release or data migration to an application requires proper Regression testing
• Reliability testing is done to reduce the risk of failure during real time deployment
• All possible tests are performed to ensure proper security of the network
• SaaS applications are expected to have a heavy load, performance and scalability testing is required to verify the behaviour of the application at peak loads, in multiple environments
• Compatibility of the application when accessed on different browsers by different people needs to be tested
• Whenever new features are added or old features are updated, continuous upgrade testing is required for SaaS applications
• API testing is performed to ensure functionality, security, completeness, and performance of documentation
• Customer queries, payments, and billing are taken care of as part of Operational testing.

Good applications bring harder challenges. Since the SaaS system is accessed directly by the customer over the internet, security concerns are the major reason for worry. Despite this concern, many businesses are adopting the SaaS application because of its benefits.

SaaS Application Testing Challenges

Although the challenges may differ a bit depending on the type of project, let’s look at a few of the common challenges that are experienced during SaaS application testing:

1. Frequent upgrades and releases in a very short time period provide less time to check the validity and security of the applications
2. Sometimes the back-end components that are associated with the user interface of the application are left to be validated
3. With different user behaviours at the same time, it becomes a very difficult task to take care of privacy and ensure no exchange of customer data
4. We have discussed why performance testing is required for SaaS applications, but the major concern and challenge in this regard is to identify the most accessed areas and test them with a large number of users from different locations
5. During the integration and migration of SaaS applications, it becomes very difficult to maintain the privacy and integrity of the test data
6. Whenever a new release is made, SaaS testers need to test all the licensing factors including usage, the number of users and functionality of the application
7. There is no standardization of the application.

To overcome these challenges, the following steps can be adopted. Although these programs may differ depending on the requirements of the project. Let’s have a look at some of them:

• Automate scripts to tackle frequent update challenges
• Based on your observations, determine the areas of the application that are accessed more often. This will help in better performance testing when there is a restriction in the time limit
• For data security of SaaS applications, strong encryption is recommended at the time of integration.

SaaS applications are gaining popularity day-by-day and SaaS testing is well-known for delivering high standard applications successfully.

SaaS Platform Testing Best Practices

After understanding the challenges, let’s take a look at the best practices for testing a SaaS-based Application:

1. Enhance SaaS testing efforts by observing various organizational patterns
2. Use a powerful hardware application to recognize the performance of the application with additional resources
3. Make sure you have full access to the testing requirements needed for SaaS applications
4. From time to time, test the performance of the application by increasing the workload by adding concurrent users from multiple environments
5. It is advisable to prepare a test plan in advance after getting the testing requirements specification
6. Check on security concerns often, especially at the time of integration and migration.

Compared to traditional methods, SaaS models have less time span to perform and complete testing methodologies. Thus, many of the testing elements get eliminated as compared to traditional methodologies. The best way to incorporate this is to adopt agile methods as well as utilize automation testing tools as much as possible.

SaaS Testing Tools

Apart from the basic elements of testing like functional, performance and unit testing, SaaS testing methods also include some consideration related to the security of the application.

Let’s get an idea of SaaS testing tools in brief:

#1) PractiTest

This testing tool is designed to provide an end to end test solution as well as allow users to control their development and testing processes. The main features of this testing tool are enlisted below:

• Ensures communication with organizations at various levels
• Provides ways to manage their respective projects, their testing processes, and information
• Offers status of the project at all times
• Manage relevant communication with other stakeholders.

#2) qTest

This is a cloud-based test management tool, used by organizations for easy communication and scalable test management solutions. The main features of this testing tool are as follows:

• Easy to learn and help teams at various locations with coordination
• It has the ability to add notes, notations and a create detailed defect sheet
• The free trial is available with an easy sharing option
• This tool allows you to have proper planning as well as management of a project schedule, test case documentation, defect sheets, test cases, and test results
• This tool has a proper dashboard to display project progress, queries and useful reports.

#3) QMetry

This tool acts as an interface and links project requirements to its test cases and to defects. This helps in end to end coverage of project progress as well as traceability.

Some of its features are as follows:

• In cases where requirements change from time to time, this tool provides more flexibility to use older test cases
• Results and status of the test cases can be recorded at the time of test case execution
• The execution page is available to edit test cases in real time if required
• It also manages defects with a link. All the previously logged issues for particular test cases can be easily found. This helps to avoid the repetition of duplicate defect logging.

We have given only a brief idea of each tool in this article. There are a lot more features in each one, which will become clearer when you learn each tool.

Conclusion

This article covers almost every aspect you need to know about SaaS testing. With the advancement in cloud testing, people have learned various aspects of this testing and its challenges too.

About the author: This is a guest post by Sushma S. She is working as a Senior Software Test Engineer in an MNC.

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