When Emulation Is Not Enough: Testing in Production

by Nataliia Vasylyna | August 15, 2016 6:15 am

In a software testing lab[1], a lot of attention is given to bug hunting in a testing environment. Some customers believe that it is all they need for a bug-free product.

But how can, for example, load testing[2] in a testing environment provide results that will be completely applicable for a production environment? Of course, it can provide quite accurate results and valuable information, but a software tester should never neglect testing in production.

How to Test in Production and Not Make Users Feel Annoyed?

• Testers need to continuously monitor user experience characteristics. If testing in production causes inconveniences for users, it should be stopped immediately.
• It is better to execute the sessions of performance testing [3]in production at the time when the number of users is minimal.
• To create efficient test cases, software testers need to carefully analyze test data gathered in a production environment. This should include collection and examination of user behaviors, workflows and resources.
• Sometimes testing of production-deployed code is not enough. For all-embracing testing, it may be required to test servers from production data center or check some other aspects of a product in production. Testers should preliminary think over all testing activities that are planned to be executed in production.

When executed carelessly, testing in production may be a big problem for end users. That is why this type of activity requires a lot of effort to be put in.

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• Software Quality Trends in 2026: Key Changes Shaping Modern QA[5]
• The 2025 Cloudflare Outage: A Stress Test for SaaS Resilience[6]

Source URL: https://blog.qatestlab.com/2016/08/15/enough-test-emulation/

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