Compliance Testing is becoming increasingly crucial in software product development. With regulations like GDPR and stringent industry standards, product teams can no longer view compliance as an afterthought. Companies face real business risks – from lawsuits and fines to reputation damage and customer churn – if products fail to protect data privacy, ensure accessibility, or meet security mandates.
That’s where compliance testing comes in. Far more than a check-the-box activity, compliance testing is how product managers ensure their offerings meet legal and regulatory demands. By baking compliance into the development lifecycle, product teams can avoid costly delays from failed audits and drive best practices that support customer trust and retention.
This post will cover how product managers can make compliance testing a key part of building products users want and businesses need. We’ll explore integrating compliance into requirements planning, executing effective testing procedures, and turning compliance into a competitive advantage rather than just extra work. From small startups to large enterprise software teams, these compliance testing principles are essential for any product targeting success in today’s landscape.
What is Compliance Testing
Compliance testing checks software against mandatory standards and regulations. It validates that product functionality, underlying infrastructure, and handling of user data all adhere to laws and formal guidelines.
Several types of compliance testing help validate different aspects:
- Security testing checks for vulnerabilities, validates encryption and access controls and aims to prevent hacking threats.
- Privacy testing ensures proper policies and controls are in place to handle sensitive user data as per standards like GDPR or CCPA.
- Industry-specific testing covers niche mandates – for example in financial services, healthcare, or e-commerce.
- Accessibility testing verifies sites and apps meet the required standards for usable design.
Top compliance frameworks like PCI, HIPAA, and SOX have complex requirements. Teams use testing to prove policies, development practices, testing coverage, and reporting meet both the letter and intent of these regulations. Auditors may do independent verification as well.
The benefits of building compliance testing into products are enormous:
- Avoiding costly non-compliance fees, lawsuits, and damage to brand reputation
- Supporting customer retention by earning ongoing trust
- Unlocking market opportunities with certifications like SOC2 or ISO 27001
- Forcing better security, privacy, and accessibility practices
- Gaining an advantage over competitors with public compliance reports
Planning for Compliance Requirements
To effectively build compliance into products, product managers need to proactively gather requirements from the start:
Research regulations and standards: Product managers should directly research which compliance frameworks are relevant for their product and industry. For example, fintech products require following FFIEC guidelines while health products need HIPAA compliance. Stay on top of changing laws and new versions of standards as well.
Work with legal and compliance teams: Most companies have existing cross-functional teams focused on legal and compliance issues. Collaborate with them to interpret how identified regulations apply to your product’s functionality and data flows. Ask questions until the requirements are clear.
Build compliance into product roadmaps: Don’t treat compliance as an afterthought or separate workstream. Directly build required security controls, accessibility remediation, and data protections into feature roadmaps and story maps. Get leadership buy-in on the importance of this work.
Budget for compliance resources: From consulting help to auditing services and testing tools, compliance has real budget impacts. Product managers need to size and justify these needs to ensure teams can execute downstream testing cycles effectively.
Implementing Compliance Processes
While some testing occurs right before major releases, managing compliance is also about establishing robust processes across the product lifecycle:
Integrate compliance sprints: Add compliance-focused stories to each development sprint instead of waiting for hardening sprints. For example, have every sprint include automated security scanning, vulnerability remediation, and progress on accessibility checklist defects.
Conduct data and architecture reviews: Schedule periodic reviews of current data schemas, flows, and overall software architecture. Identify potential compliance gaps as new features may introduce new data or risks.
Evaluate third-party component security: Develop a “risk rating” approach for assessing open-source libraries and APIs integrated into the product. Higher-risk additions should get more scrutiny regarding their compliance.
Provide compliance training: Education across product and engineering organizations is vital so issues can be identified early, not just by specialized security staff. Provide role-specific training on privacy, accessibility, and security compliance considerations.
Executing Compliance Testing
When it comes time to validate compliance, rigorous testing is key:
Leverage automated testing tools: Automated tools can accelerate testing by scanning for known vulnerabilities, detecting data leaks, and identifying common accessibility issues. CI/CD integration spots problems early.
Conduct manual tests: Human-driven testing based on compliance checklists is essential to verify controls and simulate real-world security threats and data handling needs.
Do penetration/ethical hacking: Hire external experts to simulate malicious attacks on the product infrastructure and applications to surface hard-to-find weaknesses. Fixing these legitimate vulnerabilities improves real-world security.
Design test cases for localization: Every market may bring distinct compliance rules around data residency, censorships, or localized access. Product and QA teams need to work together to craft relevant test cases.
Prioritize accessibility testing: Issues like poor color contrast, keyboard navigation, and screen reader support create serious access barriers. However, systematic testing as part of each release can make constant improvements.
Analyzing and Acting on Test Results
The real work comes after testing triaging findings and prioritizing fixes:
Analyze failures by severity and risk: Not every compliance failure presents equal risk. Analyze factors like the likelihood of exploitation, impact on customers, and potential brand damage.
Plot out remediation roadmap: Build a cross-functional plan to address high-severity findings in the next release, while scoping lower severity issues into future sprints.
Update status reports and scorecards: Maintain current reports on compliance status, testing coverage, and defect counts to show progress over time. Identify areas needing focus.
Achieve incremental milestones: In addition to pre-launch certifications, identify incremental milestones like addressing high-risk vulnerabilities, fixing serious accessibility gaps, and complying with major standards.
Maintaining and Improving Over Time
Compliance is never “done” – product managers need to drive ongoing improvement:
Build regression testing: Add compliance test cases into main regression suites run during CI/CD pipelines as well as manual QA cycles. This bakes compliance into status quo testing.
Expand tests to cover new features: With each product increment, new functionality may introduce areas not fully covered by existing compliance validation. Evolve tests in parallel.
Stay updated on changing regulations: Regulations frequently change – including major overhauls of standards like PCI DSS along with new privacy laws worldwide. Block time quarterly to review.
Leverage automation: Manual testing struggles to scale across large, complex products. Invest in test automation tools with broad coverage to accelerate execution.
Treat compliance as code: Developers treat application code as an asset – do the same for compliance controls, configurations, and tests! This improves maintainability long-term.
Make testing transparent: By publishing Testing coverage statistics or data on vulnerability fixes, companies build trust while encouraging product teams to drive progress.
Conclusion
Compliance testing, while often seen as a chore, is integral for building products that customers trust and use faithfully over time. By tackling compliance head-on instead of delaying to the last minute, product teams reduce legal risk, preempt audit findings, and focus on user wants alongside business needs.
Integrating compliance into requirements planning, release processes, and roadmapping is vital work for any modern product aiming to serve user needs sustainably and responsibly. The effort pays off with smoother releases, reduced fire drills, and higher-quality products. Establishing a culture focused on legal requirements and ethics from the start attracts top talent seeking purpose-driven work.
With the right focus on compliance across product, engineering, and QA teams – supported by security and legal counterparts – companies can transform compliance from a cost center into a competitive advantage. The examples and best practices covered here aim to provide that critical mindset shift for product managers to lead the way.
