Create, Maintain, Move and Close

Usually when we talk testing it’s about the road to production. It’s about getting requests from the customer/Product owner and shipping it. We tend to forget that there is more to the life cycle of application than adding to the pile. Inspired by the old CRUD I identify the following stages in the application life. Create, Maintain, Move and Close. Testing can add value all of the four modes, with twists for each one.

Create: “oh shiny” – Creating an application is usually novel, but the more times you have build similar applications it becomes routine. Some applications have to be build from scratch, others merely configured. It matters a lot if you are building a unique app – or if it yet another roll-out of a COTS application. The testing in “create” usually focuses on bugs to be fixed before go-live, and very little on what happens afterwards. Building a new  application is usually a strategic decision to the business that solves a problem or builds on a potential. Requests are numerous for new things.

Maintain: “ship, but don’t destroy production” – At some point the customer sends you more requests to the stuff already build than new features. Application maintenance is all about balancing new features and updates to existing features. Existing features are being used by the end users, and they will eventually request updates and bug fixes. Fragmentation, merging and branching becomes and issue – especially if you maintain the application as a solution for a range of customers. Customers might want to differentiate between their requests – as they won’t want to pay for bugs in previous releases, but rather want to pay for new additions.

Move:  “It has to work as before, just with a new team“. To many businesses maintaining an application is not their key area; They might be a public organisation with no need to have their own staff of developers. So “Application Outsourcing” becomes a thing for many applications, and with deals being won and lost – it will happen that  the development tasks moves from one supplier to another. Testing can make sure that processes are in place in the new location and that the state of the application is known in the new location. The testing during “move” doesn’t involve the functionality of the application, but rather the ability of the new team. Sometimes the hosting of the application stays they same,  in other cases it is the hosting of the application that changes and nothing else.

Close: “test that it’s gone” Sometimes IT strategies and businesses decide to close down an application. Perhaps it’s being replaced, perhaps it’s redundant after a long time. Examples could be hospitals moving from one patient journal to another or whole systems being sunsetted. It could also be the closing of end-of-life applications (Windows servers, HPQC etc). The value to the business is knowing the application is gone, and the information in the old systems not trusted anymore.

It is very much possible to have testing in all modes of the application life cycle. Similarly it is very much possible for testing to add value in all stages of the software development life cycle. It’s a matter of perspective.