Microsoft-Based Platform for Corporate Service Management

Within the ITSM Portal, we deal with a huge number of field type combinations that have variable configurations depending on the customer’s business specifics. Thus we have suggested a combinatorial testing method. This approach is commonly used in medical and rocket engineering to deal with a vast amount of data in different configurations. With combinatorial testing, we got reliable results ensuring that all types of fields with different mixed configurations interacted properly.

The next step after deciding on a combinatorial testing approach was to determine the most suitable testing method in terms of accuracy and time efficiency. We recommended pairwise testing for the ITSM Portal, which covers all possible pairs of parameter values with at least one test. According to NASA research, pairwise testing detects 93% of failures, compared to 98% for triplewise testing. Given our project requirements for timeline and accuracy, pairwise testing was the best fit.

To conduct pairwise testing,  we needed to determine particular pairs for testing. Manual calculations for this task could have taken dozens of hours, significantly increasing the project budget. To streamline the process, we utilized a specialized tool called ACTS, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We created a respective equivalent of classes that represents the project’s functionality and incorporated it into the tool. It took ACTS a few seconds to calculate all the combinations required for testing the project. As a result, instead of performing thousands of possible combinations, we’ve reached a high test coverage with only 37 test cases, which allowed the client to significantly save on budget.

As part of our testing strategy setup, we have created detailed documentation on both manual and automated testing that also covers Test Plan Azure DevOps and ACTS. Following this documentation, the Operaio in-house team will seamlessly implement our testing strategy for future versions of the ITSM Portal.

To cover a partial design update and ensure it would seamlessly interact with the current design of the portal, we conducted a thorough design review, identifying top-priority screens for the redesign. Our primary focus was on improving the user experience (UX) and making the design more intuitive and user-friendly, while also ensuring it could handle the complexity of the highly customizable interface.