(Picture taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/warrenski/4143923059/ under a Creative Commons license)

Although the FIFA states that it hasn't received any official complaints, the end users don't seem to be very happy with this new ball. 

This brings me to a comparison with IT management and testing. When you're in a situation where you're introducing a new product, in IT terms, introducing a new application, you would like to test all possible scenarios that your end users could be using and experiencing. However, that's a very time and resource intensive process to do for every application change or update.  It's like getting ready for the big game but you have no game plan.

That's why a new approach has been developed. One that's based on the 80/20 rule. Testing 80% of the application will cost about 20% of the efforts. The remaining 20% of your application will not be tested before deployment, but monitored with a real user monitoring solution immediately after deployment. These tools track all user experiences, including error messages and the performance and availability metrics from an end user perspective. Should any anomaly occur, you would be able to repair it quickly so you and your end users can get back into the game.

These real user sessions can be easily converted into testing scripts, so the 80% of the application testing can be complimented with the remaining 20%.

Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g group of products offers both the real user monitoring solution with Oracle Real User Experience Insight, as well as the required testing solution with Oracle Application Testing Suite. 

Visit our Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g resource center and find out how it's Business-Driven IT Management approach will help you keep your eye on your business ball.

Happy World Cup.