Operational Readiness Test [ORT] is one of the software testing strategies. Operational Readiness Test (ORT) is performed at the final testing stage when all other testing activities are performed and build-ready for live deployment.
Operational Readiness Test (ORT)
Database Backup: Database backup is necessary when any disaster or data gets corrupted. Generally, every web application has one database which stores the data in the database. It could be any data like customer profile, product price, images, articles, the number of products, login, and password information, etc. Database backup should be scheduled at every specified time, and this task should be performed regularly. From the Operational Readiness Test perspective, you should test and validate that the database has been backed up successfully without data loss. Testing can be performed with the help of developers or tools implemented to take the application developer’s database backup at a specified time.
Database Recovery: Database recovery testing should be performed whenever there might be a chance to lose data. Data loss can happen at any point in time, and the reason could be network failure, website down, Operating System, or any disaster. If any issues happen with the database, you should be able to recover the lost data and able to restore it. Recovery and restoration could be performed either manually or automatically, depending on what mechanism is applied to the application developer.
Software Installation and Configuration
Software Installation and Configuration tests are performed to check the software developed is being installed successfully on the system. Each step of installation instruction should be described, and there should not be any difficulty or issue in installing the software. Also, Installation and configuration tests should be performed to ensure the deployment package, scripts, and configurations work according to installation instructions. The components deployed to ORT shall be packaged and distributed to the available environment. Verification of installation, configuration, and of major functionality should be done by execution of (preferably automated) Smoke Tests.
Rollback: A rollback test should be performed once any new deployment is done, and after deployment, the application is not working as expected. You should be able to roll back the application to the last known working configuration if problems occur during the deployment. If any new deployment is planned, make sure the previous working build is available if the situation comes to roll back the application to the previous working version.
Failover: Failover testing verifies that the application proceeds as normal when a redundant component fails. To execute a failover test, you need to have defined failover scenarios. If a failure occurs in one component, you should have a reason or cause that causes failure. Failover tests could be performed for network failover, component failover, server failover, etc. For example – If you order online, your order should be placed successfully even if any backend component fails. A server could have many instances running by which a request reaches the server, so if any instance fails, other instances should be capable of handling the request.
Supportability: In Supportability testing, we perform the following testing – Installation test, Rollback test, and Monitoring. The installation test and Rollback have been explained above. In monitoring, we check the handling of events generated when the system malfunctions. We perform verification of monitoring mechanisms for the system. How are Availability, performance, and capacity being measured and reported?
Reliability: In the Reliability test, we perform the Failover test and Recovery routines explained above. Also, we check that Recovery Routines work within the conditions specified.
Performance: Generally, performance testing is performed separately, but in the Operational Readiness Test, you should verify the application behavior under load. Start performing the load test with a specified number of users and check the application behavior manually. In other words, we can perform sanity checks of the application under load.
Regression: In regression testing, you should test the other application functionalities not part of the new implementation. You should check that the functionality of other modules is working as expected and that the new change does not affect existing features. Generally, regression tests are executed to secure and verify that integration to external systems works and does not affect most critical business functionality.
Maintainability: Performing maintainability testing, we test installation routines and rollback for updates/patches for a database, infrastructure, and application. Maintaining the application should be easy.
Security: The following test approaches should be performed during security testing – Security Information and Event Management, Penetration Testing, Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Access control, source code review, data protection, etc.
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