Technical Testing is a collective term for the verification of Non-Functional Requirements that fall outside the domain of Performance & Capacity requirements. Specifically the streams of risk mitigation activities falling under this umbrella are: Operational Acceptance Testing, (verification of Operational Support requirements for resiliency, recoverability, integrity, manageability and supportability) and Security & Penetration Testing (verification of the system security requirements).

Technical Testing: PLAN Phase

• Operational Acceptance Test (OAT) planning. Strategies to minimise the likelihood of implementing a solution that is not fit for Operational Support, by stage-gating and validating requirements for:
  • Back-up & Recovery. Operations and integrity of backup procedures to ensure that the platforms and data can be successfully restored (to required recovery points and physical locations)
  • Component Failure (and Fail-back). Verifies the system (application [batch and online] and platform) has been designed to cope with unplanned outages and can meet the Recovery Time Objectives.
  • Shutdown & Resumption. Verify the system can be shutdown and restarted cleanly within the required service disruption tolerance levels and that valid procedures exist for any start-up dependencies.
  • Monitoring & Alerting. Verify that alerts are raised as required under failure, error and threshold levels.
  • Operational Support & Procedure. Verify that procedures, documentation and required diagnostic information is available, valid and sufficient to support the corresponding services, and Service Level Agreements, as planned during Production.
• Security & Penetration Test planning to the provide mitigation activities to identify system security flaws and vulnerabilities optimally balanced against the clients IT solution and risk appetite.
  
  

Technical Testing: BUILD Phase

• Operational Acceptance Test:
  • Collaborate with Project and Operations Support teams to create the Operational Acceptance quality assurance conditions and stage-gates to be exercised prior to Production implementation.
  • On behalf of Operations Support, identify and escalate resolution of critical Operational Acceptance deliverables not tracking to project timelines.
  • Statically test Operational procedures and processes.
• Security & Penetration: creation of test suite to be exercised during test execution phase.
  
  

Technical Testing: RUN Phase

• Operational Acceptance Test: in the test lab, validate the Operational Acceptance for Back-up & Recovery, Component Failure and Fail-back, Shutdown & Resumption, Monitoring & Alerting, and Systems Assurance. Ensuring issues are resolved in the solution and/or via updates to the corresponding Operational Support documentation.
• Security & Penetration: identify and resolve security and vulnerability flaws via execution of test suites (where possible automated and exercised in "lights out" conditions).