As technology and software continues to innovate and gain complexity, the name of the game is evolution. Adapting to these changes is no longer a “nice-to-have” — it is a matter of survival.
By embracing digital transformation, enterprises fortify their offerings against new competitors that arise seemingly every day. Injecting your software development lifecycle (SDLC) with the latest advancements in software testing is an essential step for staying ahead of the curve.
Service virtualization is a powerful tool that can be used to develop and release complex software faster and more efficiently. In the past, enterprises were reduced to just a few major releases per year due to the resources available to them. Now, with powerful tools like service virtualization driving digital transformation, enterprises can drastically speed up releases while reducing costs.
In this blog, we will discuss what service virtualization in testing is, why it is important for enterprises, and tips for adopting it into your organizational workflow.
What is Service Virtualization in Software Testing?
Service virtualization in software testing provides testing teams access to otherwise incomplete or constrained components in their testing environment that would slow the development and testing process. Service virtualization removes these constraints by creating a virtual version of those dependencies and simulating their functionality.
By eliminating bottlenecks in the testing process, service virtualization in software testing means quick and easy access to dependencies like:
Incomplete systems
Systems controlled by a third-party
Restricted systems
Systems needed by multiple parties simultaneously
Why is Service Virtualization in Software Testing Important for Enterprises?
Speed is often one of the major priorities for enterprises during their development cycles: fast testing, fast debugging, and fast releases. In order to achieve the desired speed, enterprises need to be working with a complete test environment — something that is often easier said than done.
For enterprises, adopting service virtualization in software testing means achieving easy access to a complete test environment because it fills in the gaps of a test environment due to the dependencies listed above. Not only does service virtualization provide a complete test environment, but it also allows testing teams to alter the behavior of that test environment — thereby unlocking the ability to achieve the desired speed of a development cycle.
Another vital aspect of virtualized services — especially for enterprises — is its ability to scale based on growing and increasingly complex needs. It is one thing to virtualize services in a limited, one-off testing environment. But what happens when you need to dramatically expand the scope of your testing while still being dependent on those systems? A robust and powerful service virtualization tool is essential for enterprises.
Enterprise Benefits of Service Virtualization in Software Testing
Service virtualization is a tool that can cut across many departments and involve multiple roles. Most commonly, those involved will be testing, development, and QA. Since that is the case, it is important to consider service virtualization in software testing as an essential component within your SDLC.
Buy-in for adoption of service virtualization is incredibly important. Once that is achieved, everyone will begin to see the benefits. Those benefits can be broken up into three areas:
Development
Service virtualization in software testing can eliminate the need for creating and maintaining stubs and mocks. There will no longer be the common waiting period for finished services from other developers. It can also enable private or on-demand working environments.
Testing
Teams can continue to perform load tests with a simulated lab environment that will achieve high-quality results just like a traditional lab environment — leading to more reliable deployment. System test and integration gridlock is eliminated thanks to now-available environments. Development code quality is improved, which leads to all planned functional testing being executed.
Infrastructure
Virtual models and simulated live environments replace cumbersome hardware, software, and database investments. This translates to low resource usage from CPU, RAM, etc. Third-party infrastructure dependency is removed, which drastically reduces costs and resource requirements. Adding complex environments no longer needs to be a complex task.
Why Service Virtualization is Critical to Seamless Application Testing
Hear from a BlazeMeter expert about top use cases for service virtualization in testing and why it unlocks the ability to test your application quickly, smoothly, and at scale.
Tips for Adopting Service Virtualization Within Enterprises
At an enterprise level, gaining buy-in across your software testing and development teams should be your first priority. If there is resistance at any point, your service virtualization efforts will be hampered.
Luckily, there are several effective ways to gain acceptance from your entire team on your way to adopting service virtualization in software testing into your workflow.
Setting the Stage
Picture this: You are gathering your entire software testing and development team to announce the implementation of service virtualization. Rather than simply saying, “We’re doing this, let’s get started,” you should lay the groundwork first and come with an intentional plan in place. You can do this in the following ways:
Identify business cases that can be directly improved by service virtualization.
Connect and educate all areas that will be affected by service virtualization: Project Management, Architecture, Operations, Security, and specific Business Units.
Establish a base of knowledge as a support system as demand grows.
Create an enterprise-wide catalog of services that is maintained and encouraged to use.
Establish a standard service request process that is adopted across the enterprise to maintain standardization and maintenance.
Updated Assets
As time goes on, the services you virtualize are going to experience changes or alterations. It is highly recommended to create a repository of assets that can be dynamically updated to help ensure your service virtualization is documented accurately, can be readily accessed, and updated with changes to suit a specific environment.
Knowledge Center
You want to make it as easy as possible for your team to seek out and find the information they need to best utilize your service virtualization tools. These insights are commonly located in one central location or portal that can be accessed by everyone.
Informal Check-Ins
Not everything must be strict and by-the-book. Encourage an environment where informal check-ins or convenient education opportunities are present that cause minimal disruption to a team member's day-to-day work.
Weekly Assessments
While everyone who can is encouraged to leverage service virtualization, you should have in-house experts. Be sure these experts are regularly available as a resource to your larger team.
Audit, Audit, Audit
Once you have established a process of requesting, building, and implementing virtual services, it is vital that you consistently audit this process to identify weak points and opportunities to improve. You should be tracking consistency and efficiency.
Ditch the Red Tape
Barriers to use are the quickest way to slow adoption of service virtualization in testing. Ensure that the process of ordering a virtual service is quick and simple.
Celebrate Success
As your team gets more comfortable using service virtualization, advances in how it's used are sure to follow. You should highlight these advancements and how the efficiencies they created directly impacted your bottom line. We want to cheer each other on!
Related Webinar: Service Virtualization Overload
Bottom Line
Adopting digital transformation is essential to maintaining a competitive edge. Yet it can often be difficult to implement into established workflows. This becomes immensely more complicated at the enterprise level where teams are larger, and the work is more nuanced and complex.
By incorporating service virtualization in software testing at an enterprise level, you can ensure a high-quality release faster than ever. When service virtualization becomes a core component of your testing strategy, the sky is the limit.
BlazeMeter’s Service Virtualization capabilities are unrivaled in the software testing industry. See for yourself how you can easily build, scale, analyze, and automate performance tests by getting started for FREE today!