Post Deployment Testing in Software Testing

Post-deployment testing is a type of testing in which the software is tested after it is deployed to production. This testing may help us find those problems that were not detected before its deployment in the production and despite all the planning and testing carried out before the final deployment, obtaining user opinion is important for the improvement of a website. It ensures that the website adapts to the needs of the user. User feedback may come in various forms, ranging from reporting faults to suggestions for improvement of the website. 

Need for Post-Deployment to get Testing

What do we need to test the application post its deployment and how? There are various ways to get the user’s feedback about the software application but the effective way to know the opinion is by getting a survey form filled out by every user because these survey forms can be used to detect the latest trends from the users and also provide some good information about the software improvement. The response obtained from these surveys may help the tester or developer some improvements in their app.

Now after receiving the user feedback, the testers need to identify the useful fault reporting, suggestions, and recommendations that the users have given. For these given things the following criteria can be used to check which feedback is more important:

1. Calculating the total users that have given the same feedback or recommendation. If the feedback is not very popular among the group of users, then we must think twice before implementing their suggestions in the software.
2. Are the users fake or Real? It is vital to make sure that the Source of feedback: and suggestions come from regular users and not accidental users.
3. Is the suggested idea worth implementing? Before implementing the suggested changes, the cost and schedule must be analyzed carefully and there should be a thorough check of the correctness of the proposed change and its impact on the application. The benefits of implementing the suggested changes in the software must be determined by the testers or developers.
4. Will the feedback or recommendation increase its impact on the software? Is the recommendation compatible with other features also? Getting this feedback is very significant and answering them is very crucial and making the results of implementing these recommendations are sometimes unpredictable.

 Post-DeploymentDeployment to Testing Activities

• Post-deployment verification: Firstly, the QA or Test lead conducts the verification of the software application as per the need and its requirement and these are generally the test plans and the test cases of the software application which are compared from the previous or existing test plan and test cases.
• Reporting the post-deployment verification results: After verifying the above cases, the results with all the necessary information are then told to the clients and if they find any issues/defects in the production then the issues are told to the test lead, and further new testing will be conducted.
• Removing the test data: Once the results are positive, the test data that was used in the post-deployment testing are then removed from the process.
• Monitoring the application: Finally, if there's any need for monitoring the application in the production then that is also done.

The above procedure is important for the client to ensure that their suggested functionalities of the software are properly addressed, fixed, and removed otherwise the client may have to invest a lot of cost and effort for testing the application again.