Sustainable competitive advantage, while once a necessary part of any strategy, is now increasingly obsolete for most firms. The new path to winning means capturing opportunities quickly and exploiting them decisively. It's all about learning to thrive in a transient advantage economy. Transient advantage is the central thesis of Rita McGrath's recent book on competitive advantage. These principles are especially relevant for agile companies that pursue digital-first business models. Quinnox has adopted this philosophy for its clients and its own business where we believe enterprise integration driven by API's is the bridge to digital transformation, speed to market, and frequency to market.

1. © 2019, Quinnox, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not distribute without permission.
The application
programming
interface - bridge to
digital transformation
and transient
advantage?
Ravi Sundaram

2. - Rita Gunther McGrath
The concept of sustainable
competitive advantage, while once a
necessary part of strategy, it is now
increasingly obsolete and no longer
a realistic goal for most firms. In a
world without sustainable competitive
advantage, the new path to winning
means capturing opportunities
quickly and exploiting them
decisively, then moving on once
they are exhausted. It’s all about
learning to thrive in a transient
advantage economy.
The end of
Competitive Advantage

3. 3
The end of Competitive Advantage
- Rita Gunther McGrath

4. How is this relevant to our conversation?
▪ How is Transient Advantage relevant to Quinnox and
its clients?
▪ Is Digital relevant for Transient Advantage?
▪ The application programming interface - bridge to
digital transformation and transient advantage?
▪ Where is S/W testing in all things agile, transient and
digital?
▪ Intelligent (API) testing for speed and frequency to
market
▪ Strategy

5. 5
The Quinnox Go To Market Strategy
Transient
Advantage
Digital Integrations APIs
Partners
Core Solutions IP
Quinnox GTM WSO2
TEST S/W
Integrations
Testing

6. 6
Transient Advantage for Quinnox and its clients
Digital Transformation – for the transient advantage economy
• Company Culture
• Goals
• Stakeholders
People
• Agile
• Innovation
• Disruption
• React / Counter Disruption
Process
• Faster
• Smarter
• Automation
• Interconnected
TechnologyCreating and capturing
opportunities quickly and exploiting
them decisively
APIs

7. 7
Is Digital relevant for Transient Advantage?
Digital Business Technology Platform
AI = artificial intelligence; OT = operational technology; IoT = Internet o sf Things Source: Gartner (June 2018) ID: 355063
The application programming interface - bridge to
digital transformation and transient advantage?

8. 8
The Digital and API Personas
The API goals are to “code once, use many”, improve quality and
increase reusability
If APIs and agile are the answer to digital (expectations), then
testing is the Achilles heel
Application development managers who want to
understand best practices with API development and
where the use of APIs can enable potential business
benefits. (Akshay and Yadi)
QA and test managers who need to create a
testing practice for APIs.
CIOs looking for a way to improve quality, flexibility and
development throughput to support business priorities.
Transient
Advantage
The application programming interface - bridge to
digital transformation and transient advantage?

9. Where is S/W testing in all things agile,
transient and digital?

10. 10
API Testing..
1.Code Changes 2.Interface Changes
3.Schema Changes 4.API Call Sequence Changes
At the lowest level, we have code changes. Here the
interface, schema, and call sequence do not change.
Emphasis on this type of testing is on ensuring the logic
of the API remains consistent after code refactoring,
code deletion, or code insertion.
Every web API has an interface that is an agreed upon
contract. Changing this contract means testing for
backward compatibility and performance. Changing the
interface often means a change to the schema which
should also be tested. Interface design is difficult and
you should expect to see this type of testing quite
frequently early in your API development.
This could involve either addition, modification, or
deletion of schema entities. Emphasis should be placed
on testing backward compatibility to ensure schema
changes do not affect marshalling and unmarshalling of
parameters.
In some cases, a web API may call another web API on a
different runtime. Changes in orchestration will require
testing the entire sequence. During this type of testing,
code changes may be necessary and therefore logic
testing will be needed as indicated above.
Hierarchy of Web
API Testing
Depends on
Depends on
Depends on
Web API Orchestration
Schema
Interface
Code
Conduct testing for your web API when any level of the
stack changes

11. 11
..and is driven by different design techniques
Model Based Testing (MBT) Synthetic Based Testing
Description
The software under test can be under situation,
which are called states. The transition which
denotes going from one state to another are the test
cases generated from this test design technique.
Steps
1. Determine the different states of your web API.
2. Generate test cases by determining how to go
from one state to another.
Scenario Based Testing
Description
Scenario based testing is creating test cases from
use cases of your system under test (or user stories
in Agile environments). These use cases usually
originate from your business, functional, and
non-functional requirements. Test cases are
generated from denoting use cases in a “If. Then.
When.” syntax.
Steps
1. Determine all scenarios of how your web API can
be used (if use cases/user stories have been
already developed, use these).
2. Determine scenarios of how each use case will
be proceed in a “If. Then. When.” syntax
template.
USE CASE 1:
USER AUTHENTICATION
IF: API consumer tries to authenticate;
THEN: return success code 200;
WHEN: the credential exists in AD.
Description
This technique is demonstrated in the form of flow
diagrams in which each flow represents a
common use of your web API. Synthetic based
testing is effective under low payload conditions in
which errors can be traced back to source code
defects in synthetic based test tools.
Steps
1. Determine the most common ways your web API
is used. Represent these in flow diagrams.
2. The flows created in step 1 are to be tested end
to end.
Model Based Testing Example Synthetic Based Testing Example Scenario Based Testing Example
STATE 1:
NOT LOGGED IN
STATE 2:
SUCCESSFUL
LOGIN
STATE 3:
INCORRECT LOGIN
Username ✔
Password ✔
Username 🗶
Password 🗶
Username ✔
Password ✔
Username 🗶
Password 🗶
FLOW 1
FLOW 2
User logs
in
API
authenti-cate
s
User requests GET
/customers…
User logs
in
API does not
authenticate
API responds to
user…

12. Intelligent API testing for speed and
frequency to market

13. 13
Our QA Vision for the future
Minimize Dependency and
latency across Testing
Reduce /
Eliminate
Human Error
Reduce
Cost
Increase
Speed
Increase
Scale
Predictability
Corporate
Memory
Attrition

14. 14
CHICAGO
BARCELONA
Accelerate Software Testing
Speed to market and frequency to market
Easy to Use
Intelligent

15. 15
Technology Landscape
• Bootstrap usage
• Node JS
• Angular
• Hibernate
• Maven
• Springboot
• Jhipster
• Appium
• Selenium
• Apache Jmeter
• Sauce Labs
• AWS
• GraphDB
• MySQL
• WSO2
• Python
• Android

16. 16
API Testing code

17. 17

18. 18

19. 19
Component Testing

20. 20
Loan Lifecycle – classic API game
In the course of a loan lifecycle – the core system
has to connect to multiple applications both
internal and external.
Internal: CRM, Dedupe check, Existing
relationship, credit policy etc
External: Credit score agencies – S&P, Moodys,
Central banks etc
Before we get into full fledged E2E testing, its
important that the entire workflow is tested using
API chaining/Process testing
Loan
Origination
Loan
Application
De-Dupe Check
Credit Decision
Servicing
Disbursal
Brokers
Finance marketplace
CRM
Core Banking
3rd Party Services
Regulatory check
Devices
Web
Payments
API
CRM
Core

21. 21
Case Study : UK/Australian SaaS Bank
Neo banks challenging status quo
• Use MAMBU core banking platform
• Starting out with pre-paid cards for the millennial market
• Developing and testing internal and external APIs:
• Credit rating agencies
• AML and Threat Management
• Customer onboarding and communication

22. © 2019, Quinnox, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not distribute without permission.
Thank You