From insurance to healthcare, to telecom, business domain knowledge is crucial to setting the right objectives and creating a thriving software testing environment.
Author – Abhi Bisen
Abhi works as Senior Director for Digital Testing service in GlobalStep UK office and manages testing projects on different business domains.
While we usually hear the term business domain or domain knowledge, this article aims to give you the necessary details about the importance of business domain knowledge in digital assurance or software testing.
So, what is the business domain?
In the broader term, it’s a type of industry for which the software is being created. There are many industries, and below are some of the selected ones for which we primarily deliver digital assurance or software testing services.
What is Domain Knowledge?
It is the knowledge about the ecosystem in which a business functions. It includes industry-specific terminologies, processes, compliances, customers, competitors, etc. And these parameters will differ for every Domain. e.g., Fintech is very different from Telecom thus the software testing process will completely differ for them.
Impact on testing without having domain knowledge:
As domain knowledge points to the comprehension and understanding of the inner workings, processes, procedures, and other key aspects of an enterprise, it is necessary to get an overview of the industry, its trends, significant players, etc. The tester should also be aware of the business type, B2B or B2C. The tester should have enough information about the end customer, their categories for individuals, entrepreneurs, or companies, and what geography and culture the user belongs to, because these aspects help the tester perform good user experience testing during the digital assurance process.
The tester should be well aware of the industry’s main product, how it is created, what sales channel it uses, and how sales enablement and marketing happen. Some of these areas might not directly affect the testing but will significantly help the tester connect with other teams like business, marketing, etc. In a nutshell, this will enable the test team to define the test scenarios and scripts accurately aligned with business requirements and beyond that. At the same time, test teams need to keep upgrading business domain knowledge considering the speed of technology adoption.
If one doesn’t have domain knowledge and perform testing, there can be several issues:
- Missing the critical part of business
- Extensive false positives
- Low productivity
- Focus on non-important areas
- Wrong priorities defined
- High-risk assurance of compliance
- Ineffective reports
The GlobalStep Solution:
In GlobalStep, we firmly believe that business domain expertise brings an added advantage for testers. Domain knowledge enables testers to make sound judgments, define the right test scenarios, empower them to deal with critical scenarios, and enable them to complete thoughtful analyses.
To achieve it, we follow an end-to-end approach by recruiting SMEs from the market for listed business domains and following tailored training for our people regularly to cover an overview of various domains and their unique challenges.
We have successfully delivered projects for e-learning, Telco (VOIP), Telehealth, Digital agencies, and others. For each of these projects, we had a mixed group of people that contained industry experts. We have seen significant benefits of putting the best business domain experts on projects, and some of the average benefits are mentioned below:
 | 30% Reduction in Invalid defects |
 | Compliance Tested regulatory compliance seamlessly |
 | 25% Reduction in onboarding time |
 | 20% Increase in test coverage effectiveness |
 | 30% Early defect detention |
Click here to know more about us, or reach out to us for a quick discussion.
