How To Automatically Generate Accurate Test Data And Increase Test Coverage To >99%

The customer is a large European multinational bank with diverse operations in Insurance, Asset Management, and Financial Products. As a regulated organization, it faces stringent compliance requirements across its various divisions. The bank's operations are governed by complex and exhaustive rules, making accurate and detailed reporting a critical necessity. The bank's divisions operate independently, each requiring highly accurate input for compliance reporting. The bank's technical challenge was ensuring the test data for its software systems was correct and complete to avoid defects in regulatory reporting. Prior to working with Synthesized, the bank's testing and reporting processes were time-consuming and resource-intensive, lacking the capability to guarantee full coverage of all scenarios. The manual creation of test scenarios and data gathering was both expensive and risky, with defects often only noticed in production. The labor-intensive nature of the task delayed strategically important projects, and data engineers struggled to guarantee full coverage of test cases due to the complex testing rules and requirements.

Our Client, a large European multinational bank, found compliance reporting a recurring challenge. Their Insurance, Asset Management and Financial Products all operate independently and for reporting purposes, all divisions are required to provide highly accurate and detailed input. As a regulated organisation with many lines of business, the rules governing its many divisions are both complex and exhaustive. Particularly, the risk of defects in the software underpins their regulatory reporting. Accurate testing of these systems was critical to ensuring accurate reporting... then leading to the technical challenge which was ensuring the test data was correct and complete. Before working with Synthesized, it took considerable time and resources for the bank to undertake the testing and creation of reporting required to satisfy its legal requirements — and even then the bank did not have the capability to guarantee full coverage of all of its scenarios. The customer was lacking a clear way to measure test data coverage. The manual creation of test scenarios and gathering the right data was both expensive, and risky as defects were only noticed in production. The manually intensive and repetitive nature of the task meant too much time was spent on the test data and not enough was spent on testing the actual software. At the same time, strategically more important and other value-driving projects were delayed because of this labour-intensive process. Test engineers would spend an additional two days to manually reconcile the data against the rules that need to be validated within the report. Only a Team Leader, or someone in a similar position, with high-level clearance could pull data from production and mask it so it was safe to share with other engineers. Despite their best efforts and spending up to four days on the task, data engineers still could not guarantee full coverage of test cases due to the complex nature of the testing rules and requirements.

Automating the creation of test data that covers all necessary test cases and removing dependencies and risks of masking production data. On a weekly basis, the joint team explored the various elements of the manual test process resulting in an intimate understanding of the whats and the whys, and the magnitude of the pain points and nuances applicable to this scenario. Early on, the team agreed that they needed a solid platform that would support the automation of generating the right data — as efficiently as possible. Synthesized testing suite would enable to get the testing right on the first iteration. The functional mapping used by the customer for their test cases was processed by the Synthesized tool to create simulated data scenarios. Ultimately it delivered Intelligent Test Data supported by data rebalancing — ultimately creating the right data. Unlike manually created data or production data, our intelligent solution covers gaps such as various scenarios and data combinations that trigger different outcomes for the business rules. High-quality and accurate data generated automatically and on-demand to satisfy all testing requirements. Right amount of data to cover >99% of test cases. No unnecessary large volumes of test data, that would drive high the processing costs and times.

• Fully automated optimal data coverage for accurate testing and reporting.
• In just a few minutes, the Synthesized platform achieved what would take engineers months to do.
• For every business rule, the generated data covered greater than 99% of test cases.
• 90% of work hours spent on manually setting up the testing scenarios and creating test data was reduced.
• Test data was optimized to cover all scenarios without creating an unnecessarily vast amount of data.

• For every business rule, the generated data covered greater than 99% of test cases.
• 90% of work hours spent on manually setting up the testing scenarios and creating test data was reduced.
• With Synthesized support, the business eliminated 90% of manual effort required.
• Achieved over 99% of testing scenarios covered automatically.
• Reduced costs by over £1M pounds per year.