Cost: $40,000. This can be adjusted and tuned to a company's needs. A company with only one or two applications can expect the cost to be less.
Typically, this service would start after the two week training and planning sessions for BEAM Test. Beacon consultants, working with customer resources, build and deploy test scripts for a single PeopleSoft application suite (Financials or HCM).
Week 1 — Day 1 starts with the Test Strategy Session (total of 3 hours) to gather company information necessary to create the Strategy document. Meanwhile, the install and verification of the BEAM Test software will complete, along with a review of any manual scripts available, and preparing for training.
Day 2—5 is BEAM Test Training. there are seven 2—3 hour sessions given over three and a half days. Sessions cover all basic functions of BEAM Test, and includes exercises for students to validate and test knowledge. Concurrently, the Test strategy document is completed for delivery later in the week for customer review and sign off.
Week 2 — Test Plan development and Scenario writing week. This test plan process narrows the field to document a variety of test scenarios that reflect the business processes used by the company. Beacon will provide and use our functional test templates to help document these scenarios, to define the functionality used by the organization. For example, in Financials, companies enter manual journals at month end in GL. We will define the multitude of test cases (tests) needed. These would include:
Data is then gathered to support each of the cases, as well as the cases for the other related applications.
As the scenarios and data are defined, a test plan is concurrently developed to support the overall strategy. The test plan defines the types and amount of testing to be done. The test plan can't be completed until all scenarios and cases are define, but can be a draft of a high level plan and a framework for the final plan.
Week 3 – Finish all the scenarios and begin script writing. With the scenarios finished, the plan can be finalized and the Test writing can begin. It’s fine that not all the data is gathered for all the tests – this will come over time.
Once the basic scenarios are written but before the script writing we will have Test writing kick off. All the project personnel will gather for a 1 hour kick-off on how we’re going to accomplish the goal. Standards are communicated including those for reporting test results.
Weeks 4, 5, 6 – Finalizing the test bed. We will jointly work with them to get the scripts written. If there are scripts needed that aren’t produced, we’ll leave them with the knowledge and framework to complete. At the end of the final week there will be a wrap up to outline everything and celebrate our accomplishments.