The document discusses automating processes for a telecom company. It describes the various activities involved, including pre-sales, ordering, provisioning, billing, and service assurance. It explains that prior to automation, processes took 6-12 months due to manual work, but automation reduced this to less than 3 weeks. Testing is an important part of development and can account for 20-30% of a project's effort. The document outlines best practices for testing telecom software, including forming a dedicated testing team, following a testing workflow process, and using both manual and automated testing methods.
2. Scope of Discussion
• Introduction- Telecom, Testing
• Telecom Activities
• Why to Automate Telecom Process?
• Telecom Workflow
• Testing Overview
• Testing Team
• Testing Workflow
• Types of Testing
• Automated Testing
• Q & A - interactive
3. Telecom Activities
• Pre Sales: Handles all the sales information like promos,
discounts, services etc.
• Ordering: Applying for a new connection or changing /
modifying/ disconnecting a connection is under this division.
• Provisioning: This division deals with the physical connection
between customer and telecom service provider (TSP).
• Billing: All billing works is done under this division.
• Service Assurance: This division maintains the service of
TSP. In case of any failure in the connection this division
corrects the problem.
• Inventory Systems: This is the repository of all information.
• Tracking: This division tracks the ordering system and the
status of an order.
• Each of these tasks can be treated as a Department.
4. Why to Automate Telecom Process?
• Prior to automation, it took about 6 to 12 months for TSP to
carry out all the activities with more or less 100 % manual
involvement. That too with lots of erroneous outputs
• Then came small individual applications with its own
conventions, which took about 3 months for the whole
processes.
• Later on the applications were merged / reduced so that the
automation was given more focus, the process duration is less
than 3 weeks and with drastic reduction in errors.
The following 2 concepts were used for the same.
• Concepts of Zero: Reducing manual touch points and
increasing automation in different divisions.
• Concepts of One: Consolidating all small related applications
to a single application. Ex. User Login, Ordering.
5. Telecom Workflow
• TSP approaches customers (marketing)
• Customer generates enquiry (quotation)
• Customer orders a service to TSP
• Then after provisioning (technical evaluation),
implementation of order takes place.
• Here tracking system tracks the order status, if the order
implementation stops at any stage, tracks and tries to fix it.
• After the implementation is over and the client starts using the
service, the billing starts.
• Now to support the customer service, Service Assurance team
works.
• Software will have applications to support each of these
6. Testing Overview
• Telecom being a vast domain, will have many software
systems to automate the same & Testing is an integrated
Part of successful software development.
• 20 to 30 % of the project effort can go into testing related
activities. Test effort is estimated (History data helps)
• Focus on White and Black box testing.
• Do Manual and Automated testing based on the needs
• Follow a documented testing process
• Supports enhancements (including migration) and
production issues
7. Team
• Form a team with mix of experience (domain, testing,
interest, language)
• Members are inducted to applications and trained
• Test Engineers should be allotted to projects from the
beginning based on their experience so that they have good
control over the testing.
• Should have good clarity about the requirements
• Should be focused on finding faults in system flow. To be
specific, think yourself as a customer and simulate his
approach.
• Ensure growth and value to company and self
• Concept of independent test team
8. Testing Workflow
Project Starts
Tester Assigned
Requirements
Shared
Plan Test
Prepare Test
Execute Test
Raise Defects
Check defects
Complete
Consider the following
1. Dependency
2. Risks
3. Impact of change
4. Schedule issues
5. Resource issues
6. Tools availability
9. Types of Testing
• Based on project’s needs, we can do almost all types of
testing.
• Few of them are ST, IST / IPWT / SIT, Test Only, Test
Support Only, Table Update, performance, volume etc.
• Have separate ST environments
• May support customer driven tests also.
10. Automated testing
• We are having initiatives to use Rational Robot to do
functional, UI, regression testing & load and performance
testing.
• Uses DRTT for defect tracking.
• Uses RMT and TMT for requirement and test
management.
• RPM is used for project tracking
• Few project uses Win runner, Load runner & Test Director
also
11. Process Followed
• In AT&T account we are following Express one process.
E1 Test Level
Unit Test
Integration Test
System Test
Pre-Production Test (IST, IPWT, UAT)
Post-Production Test (ORT, UCT, NVT, EVT,NMVT)
Pre-Production Tests:
IST=Intersystem Test
IPWT=Integrated Pairwise Test
UAT=User Acceptance Test
Post-Production Tests:
UCT=User Certification Test
ORT=Operational Readiness Test
EFVT=Equipment Field Verification Test
NVT=Network Verification Test
NMVT=Network Management Verification
Test