SDLC also known as software development life cycle includes four major stages that are requirement analysis, development stage, testing and release management phase. To mention four phases in detail requirement analysis – find out the features and functions that the software should have, development stage – use cutting edge technology to develop efficient and effective software that meets or exceed requirements, testing – assure the software is working as expected and bugs free, release management – overall managing of the phases in order to release the software on time. As the researches suggest final quality of the software heavily depends on the software testing phase. If testing phase has not planned properly the tasks to be handled can be overwhelming and time consuming at most times not to mention the costs.
Test data management and test environment management are the two major sub sections of software testing phase. Test data management process includes responsible tasks such as test data masking that also known as test data privatizing. It refers to protecting confidentiality of the test data which taken from live environment. For example software company may need actual data of end users of the software to test the product such as names, credit card details, addresses etc. So it is utmost responsibility of the software development team to make sure the data is encrypted in order to protect confidentiality. Both software developers and testers utilize test environment. But generally, software companies only maintain one testing environment rather than having two for two parties. Because having two testing environment is a huge cost and increase possibilities of test data redundancy, time and effort needed to manage etc.
Concept of centralizing is one step that software development companies take in order to manage their test data management processes. Centralizing refers to mid office that provides guides, recommendations, training, procedures etc as necessary. This allows companies to save costs and time by cutting repetitive efforts. Identifying the tasks that can be automated is another crucial fact which helps software companies to be efficient on the work. Automation tools for software testing management are widely available in the industry and one of the best practice to utilize. In both centralizing and automation, the tasks should be prioritize before launching a task.