The situation
A large enterprise, with a portfolio spanning financial and insurance products/services, was looking to improve quality assurance for one of their large regulatory programs of work.
This compliance piece had complex requirements, with many facets to the way external systems, customers, and regulators were to interact with the new platform. The organisation needed a consistent, reliable solution with new systems and infrastructure that bridged business critical platforms.
Due to this being an ongoing regulatory piece, the client wanted assurances that future development activities would not compromise the quality or stability of the solution. This also opened up an opportunity for Cprime Elabor8 customer to uplift the testing capabilities across the organisation, to provide a greater experience for their customers and a modern way of working for their feature teams, while being cost-effective.
The challenge
Technically, the core platforms were developed in isolation from each other, creating complex and fragile connective tissue across the entire technical landscape. This made testing difficult: previous large programs of work were delivered with low quality, leading to lower customer satisfaction scores and growing frustration across the delivery teams.
Because the organisation typically worked within their own functional domains, they had a model that separated business teams from technology teams. This regulatory piece required these separate teams to work together for a coordinated approach to delivery.
The process
Cprime Elabor8 team employed a strategy of embedding an enterprise test automation team into the program, as well as test ‘champions’ into the feature teams.
This ‘program’ test team consisted of both Cprime Elabor8 and permanent staff, working closely with the business, UAT and program leadership teams. The team level champions helped uplift internal capability, by introducing modern practices to improve development activities. This coordinated approach enabled the sharing of innovative designs and tooling to build a lightweight governance layer across the enterprise.
Cprime Elabor8 team then used Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) and Test Driven Development (TDD) practices to build an end-to-end functional test suite, uniting the business and technology teams under a shared understanding of the end state. Fully-automated reports and dashboards gave everyone across the program a clear view of both the current state and target end state.
Cprime Elabor8 also identified an opportunity to automate parts of the test management process. Test tickets were automatically created from requirements and instantly updated when the tests were executed, adding valuable information to the automated reporting process.
The platform was expanded to include performance testing capabilities, which in turn, was used for other non-functional tests like disaster recovery and failover testing.
The results
- A culture of collaboration – The sharing of designs and tooling across teams enables capability development and a unified approach to testing.
- Alignment of desired outcomes – By leveraging BDD, business and technology teams had a concrete reference point throughout the development process.
- Transparency across the program – By delivering real-time results and metrics, the leadership team received automated reports and dashboards which fostered transparency across the program, building confidence and assurance.
- A streamlined testing process – A modern test platform is now embedded into the organisation’s culture, with fully automated test management and performance testing driving greater efficiency.
- Reduced testing costs – Automation is a cost-effective solution, with the added benefit of providing a space for rapid innovation and experimentation. This return on investment was compounded by the collaborative nature of the program, allowing teams to reuse code in a “write once, use many” mentality.
