How do test data management well?

Has your organization implemented test data management?

If your organization deals with critical or sensitive business data, test data management certainly can benefit the organization. Problems related to testing data account for 15% of all software defects, which underscores the importance of test data. This article will discuss test data manager responsibilities, what skills test data managers need, and the benefits of hiring a test data manager.

What is test data management?

The process of managing the data needed to meet automated testing requirements is called Test Data Management. Test data managers can use a test data management scheme to create test data based on the demand of testing.

A test data management scheme must ensure that it provides only high-quality data. Poor quality data is worse than no data, and low-quality data can produce unpredictable and erroneous results. Fidelity is another critical requirement for test data: test data must be close to actual production data.

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Responsibilities of the Test Data Manager

One of the primary responsibilities of the Test Data Manager is to develop and execute the organization's long-term strategy for enterprise test data management. In addition, the Test Data Manager is responsible for the estimation of test-related tasks, analysis of test requirements, design and development of supporting tools, testing, and implementation of TDM processes and schemes. The Test Data Manager creates consistent and repeatable processes to support multiple functions. These functions can include duplicate identification and masking of test data for different applications and frequent updating of test data as needed.

Another significant responsibility of the Test Data Manager is to ensure consumers comply with IT security guidelines and data compliance regulations.

The Test Data Manager is also responsible for providing data for QA testing, user acceptance testing, and performance testing.

Skills for Test Data Managers

It is important to ensure that the Test Data Manager has the skills needed to handle all the position's responsibilities. For example, they should know how to use TDM tools to create test data and be able to generate data automatically and quickly. This greatly benefits the organization, allowing many scenarios to be rapidly tested.

Talented test data managers can identify and optimize inefficiencies in test data to improve the testing process. For example, we need to manually save files from time to time to overwrite old files. Test data managers find this process slow and error-prone. In this case, they may decide to create a simple script to verify the file version time and keep saving automatically.

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Qualified candidates should be able to understand and handle test data requests from test data analysts and other requesters. They should be able to work with all types of analysts and engineers. Therefore, the Test Data Manager must have a broad range of engineering skills. For example, skills in Java (Hive, Apache, Hadoop) and Scala (Apache Spark, Kafka).

The Test Data Manager should also have experience using Excel macros, QTP, and other similar tools for automation. In addition, a good understanding of Big Data, Hadoop, Teradata, SQL Server, or DB2 database technologies will help candidates manage data storage tasks.

Finally, the ability to apply data masking techniques is an essential skill for the position of Test Data Manager. Data masking is necessary to protect a company's reputation and user data by avoiding harmful data breaches.

Benefits of Test Data Management

While some low-code platforms do have a lock-in, a feature that causes customers to become restricted by companies' software or services, other platforms can give users complete supply independence. Applications generated by such low-code media can only be used with open-source frameworks and therefore do not require locking. They can also be changed and extended with any Java IDE. The way these low-code platforms operate is free, and that freedom is what they give to their users. They are freely compatible with any major database, any Java application server, and any cloud, native environment, or operating system in Java. As you can see, low-code gets high marks for independence, flexibility, and compatibility.

1. Provide high-quality data for automated testing 

   If the data provided to the test is of poor quality, then the test is likely to fail. No strategy can save this test if low-quality data is used. Therefore, do not spend time creating detailed test strategies without high-quality data.The most important reason for hiring a test data manager is to ensure that high-quality data is provided to the automatic testing algorithm.

2. Make the data available for testing

   The primary role of the Test Data Manager is the generation of test data and the tests themselves. The test data manager ensures that high-quality test data is always available when needed, making the testing process smooth.

   Providing quality test data when needed is critical, and that is exactly what the test data manager does. For example, let's say the development team is waiting for test feedback on a newly created version. But the development team is slowed down because the test data still hasn't been completed. Ideally, the test data manager decides what test data needs to be created when developing new features. The availability of test data is aligned with the latest version, and the performance can be tested immediately, which will save valuable time for the development team.

3. Create documented TDM processes

   It is important that the test data manager can document the TDM process. Having a documented TDM process can help other team members understand how the test data manager generates test data and handles the testing of application scenarios.

   Suppose your test data manager takes a leave of absence or leaves. In that case, the organization can still rely on the process documented by the test data manager, and the team will be able to understand and carry out tasks according to the TDM quickly.

4. Detect errors early

   Test Data Manager ensures that your TDM process runs smoothly. This will increase the chances of catching errors faster. The cost of fixing mistakes will increase with the total time to detect them.

Demand for test data management is growing

The need for test data managers is growing due to the dramatic increase in data volumes. The amount of data generated today is enormous, with 2.5 gigabytes of data being generated every day. In the last two years, we have developed 90% of all the data generated in this world.

Another reason for needing a test data manager is to prevent test data breaches. The cost of each data breach can be as high as $4 million. However, many organizations have yet to see the value of test data management, with only 24% of organizations currently masking their data.

Filling a test data manager position is not easy, the position requires skills in many areas such as programming, engineering, data masking, and project management. There is fierce competition among companies to hire a test data manager with a suitable skill set.