Having accurate and timely test data is critical for the success of software engineering and any IT project.

Here are ten simple reasons why TDM, a key component of Test Environments Management, is so important to your organization:

Test Data Management (TDM) will:

1 Uplifts Quality: The quality of your test data affects the overall quality of your product. If you want to produce a high-quality product, you need to use high-quality test data.

2 Avoid Security Issues: Your test data should be secure, without containing data from production that is not masked (obfuscated). If the data is not secure, there is a chance of a data breach, which can be costly for the organization.

3 Reduce Re-Work: It is important that test data is of high quality and resembles production data as closely as possible. This is because we do not want to build a system/application/product that fails in production due to a lack of real-time data for testing.

4 Promote Agility: Test data management is critical to IT project delivery because it lowers the test data creation time, which results in fewer provisioning delays and shorter overall test execution time. This improves development and testing by allowing for faster feedback on code changes.

5 Keeps Focus: One of the main goals of test data management is to allow testers to focus on testing, rather than on creating test data. This allows the team to remain focused on their job (testing) and do it more effectively.

6 Reduced data-related defects: Due to the accuracy of the test data, data-related defects, or false positives, will reduce enormously, thereby increasing the efficiency of the testing process.

7 Ensures Time to Market: The goal of test environment management is to create an environment that is as close to production as possible. TDM allows for more accurate testing and reduces the number of issues that make it into production. And simply put, fewer delays and faster time to market.

8 Lower Costs: Test data management allows for the early detection of software development process bugs, which leads to less expensive fixes. In addition, not having to struggle to find relevant data allows development teams to focus on being creative and moving the organization forward.

9 Use Less Space: Good TDM, through the likes of Data Cloning & Data Subsetting, means you can manage lower volumes of test data sets more efficiently. Ultimately reducing storage footprints by x10 or more.

10 Standardize Operations: TDM is about the Standardization of your Data Operating Procedures. This helps ensure quality and consistency in your service, improve communication between team members, and provide a record of best practices. SOPs can also help you troubleshoot problems and avoid potential pitfalls.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Test Data Management is critical to IT project delivery and improving development & testing. By ensuring accuracy and timeliness of test data, promoting agility, and reducing re-work, TDM helps keep organizations focused on their goals and delivers a high-quality product.