In our last post, we introduced the concept of the Unit Functional Test (UFT) as a milestone for completing the Prepare phase of an SCM implementation. Though these tests seldom fail for product reasons, they serve to align the user community on software UI design, workflows, terminology, functional behavior, data requirements, test plan templates, and test plan execution and issue resolution protocol. Additional ancillary benefits of the UFT include facilitation of solution acceptance and adoption, change management, and enabling root cause analysis of more complex scenarios.
The next type of test positioned in complex SCM planning scenarios is the Integrated Functional Test (IFT) – and enables the Design project phase, prior to Construct and Validate. The IFT:
- Tests a combination of functional requirements on a larger, static data set with a known result;
- Generally uses production data with some dummy data filled in as needed;
- Test suite covers all functional requirements;
- Includes complete workflow tests representing typical planner use patterns, solution workflows and planning scenarios relevant to all relevant business processes;
- Is useful for explaining and illustrating functional solution behavior in robust, holistic combinations, as well as solution design, data and configuration requirements.
Like UFTs, IFTs are also stand-alone, but unlike UFTs, IFTs are more implementation-dependent, configured to combine specific features required in the current SCM implementation. These are more comprehensive tests on larger data sets which focus on key business cases and scenarios, including full-scale production-quality data sets, and have a known result. IFTs combine multiple solution features in key combinations according to business requirements, including full-scope test plans and data sets which span all functional and business requirements and represent realistic planner workflows. IFTs are developed and executed as part of the Design project phase, depend on the successful passing of the UFT test suite, and are essential for validating overall solution design.
Since building and validating the prototype model is a key requirement of the Design phase, as required functionalities and solution configurations are determined they can be conveniently instantiated into a series of IFT data sets by solution architects with minimal effort, and executed by business users as a milestone for entering the Construct phase. So, building and executing IFTs should not require significant development time unrelated to key project milestones, and may decrease the deployment time by pinpointing design issues early in the project timeline.
Like the UFT, the IFT enables business users to become comfortable with both the software UI and solution behavior in the context of complete user workflows. They are leveraged by change management program initiatives and activities to generate awareness, understanding, confidence and enthusiasm in the solution deployment during the Design phase. This activity equips business users with an understanding of how the software meets their business requirements, helps identify and resolve gaps in the solution design, and positions the business for solution adoption and acceptance. User engagement in developing and executing the IFT test suite enables them to understand how important the next test type, the System Performance Test, is for implementation success, and to drive and own this test phase.