The Trade Lifecycle: Behind the Scenes of the Trading Process

19

Testing

Testing is a key stage in the development and running of any process in the trade lifecycle. Although testing does not add anything tangible to the lifecycle, it serves to reduce the number of mistakes and improve reliability.

19.1 WHAT IS TESTING?

Testing is the activity that is undertaken to ensure that a process does what it is supposed to do. A process is designed to fulfil a business need; testing should ensure that need is fully satisfied by the process.

Testing applies to processes whether or not they are run by computers. A manual process may, however, require a different style and scale of testing because humans are better than machines at adapting to changes in operating conditions. The majority of our discussion in this chapter is related to system testing, but the ideas can be extended to manual process testing.

It is not always necessary or desirable that a process be perfect. The time spent making a process perfect might be wasted when a less than perfect system would be satisfactory for the given business process. Deciding on the appropriate level of quality is a matter of negotiation between the management, the development team and the users. It also depends upon the environment in which the process was developed and is being used.

For example, a third-party vendor supplying a confirmation system might be expected to provide a higher level of quality than an in-house developed system. This is because:

1. The vendor is more remote than the in-house ...