2. Case Study : National User
For a national user the challenge was how to carry out testing
for a proposed system where there existed only regional examples,
none of which covered all of the national functionality.
Business analysts and users alike had no large-scale “model”
of the proposed new system, which was still under development.
Datamotive’s migration and implementation experience indicated
that where computer systems are de-merging, or merging, or are simply
unfamiliar, then data featuring in the legacy systems is not merely
transformed or converted but often has a changed business significance
in the new environment, Users can benefit greatly from a considered
prediction of the ways in which the altered operation will treat
their data, and what they will be expected to provide in order to
realise the transition.
This was archived by providing a rough working model of the system,
using realistic data gathered from a number of sources and loaded
onto a demonstration database using Microsoft Access. It was possible
to populate the enterprise-level database from this demonstration
version.
The mechanism was used as a foundation to:
highlight and resolve design, usage, sourcing and security questions
provide test data with expected results
store and validate crucial reference data ready for pilot / live
running
To shadow the main system entirely would, of course, have been
a duplication of effort. In order to highlight in a practical fashion
the “bare bones” functionality, the prototype used,
as far as possible, well-known, reliable products which were relatively
easy to manipulate. |