In my latest project I had the opportunity to get more involved in a formal testing strategy of our B.I. deliverable. As I tried to prepare myself for the best approach, I realized that there is not much literature on how to properly test business intelligence architectures. While there are plenty of treatises on general software development, most with emphasis on user interfaces or transactional systems, there is not much that covers the qualitative aspects of an end-to-end Business Intelligence solution.
One could argue that there is nothing new under the sun, even in the B.I. space. It basically is just comprised of user interface elements, database tiers and some sort of data processing system (ETL can be seen as the transactional component).
And in the end, the biggest challenge is not the technical/functional component, but the process, the business.
That pattern is not much different than the requirements management arena. In fact, with the popularity of test-driven development (TDD) the tendency is to more closely link requirements with testing anyway.
If we narrow it down to the important aspects of testing, we arrive at something like this:
While test requirements are at the center, as always in life, what they mean, how they fit into the bigger picture is a matter of perspective.
A good testing process, or testers as individual professionals, reconciles user needs with project plan, developed artifacts and what impact they all have on the business.
In B.I. as well as other business solutions.
To be continued...
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