Should QA do testing in Production?

Actually not every product requires production testing. Production testing is often considered the result of amateur programming. In fact, this is no longer the case. The phrase still strikes fear in the hearts of programmers. The Quality Control community believes that production testing should be present but in case it’s done correctly. Although, as before, the point is that when done wrong, the consequences can be huge. But is it worth doing production testing?

Test case for testing in production

Testing in production helps to improve product quality and actually helps to create improved and better QA strategy. But why is this the case?

For example you test in local staging. This is a typical testing environment, but it is not the same as the actual production environment. The real environment may have different database, assets, information and configuration, meaning the user experience may be different from that of the testing environment. So, it may be the risk that your QA Engineers have investigated one user experience, and what the real customer sees is something different. Any testers doesn’t want that the real users can found the issues. QA engineers should be the persons who found issues, not customers.

Advantages of testing in production

So, what are the advantages? Well, in fact, there are enough of them.

You see the same as the customers

There are no difference and no margin for error in terms of production environments. QA engineers are testing in the real-life environment of the end users, so you can effectively test future steps and their user experience.

The biggest problems can be identified

QA engineers are testing a software. But real users very often certain to break something in the application. And it would be better to be well prepared for the case when inevitable happens.

You can check payments in real environment

There are some elements and features on production that are different then on testing environment. You cannot precisely match the payment process, so it can be beneficial to conduct the test in the production environment. And this is very important.

There are a lot of scenarios where testing in production is a big ‘no’.

You risk customer churn

During testing on production environment, there is a large amount of risk. Your customer may find some issues, churn, or simply write off your software as buggy. That’s why users who test in production need to have the ability to take risks.

In conclusion

Testing in production is a responsible and difficult subject matter. While it has some benefits, there is a cautious approach that the QA community takes on the matter – test carefully, they say! But in fact, it can be a very useful tool in your testing toolkit.

Should QA do testing In Production?