Client Opportunity: As a leading software provider for the mortgage and real estate industry in Canadian markets, our client’s customized web-based applications give them a competitive edge. To keep up with the increasing demand for their popular customized products, our client needed to automate testing for various projects to reduce the overall testing phase.
Challenge: For each custom rollout, the financial lender had a specified set of configurable features. The software had to be tested not only to ensure the requirements were met, but also to guarantee the customization had not added additional features or interfered with the product’s core functionality. The demand for these customized products was growing daily and the overall test execution phase needed to be reduced.
One of the client's existing projects, having been under steady use and development for two years, was large and contained insufficient documentation. The scripting language of the client’s existing testing tool was proprietary and the client needed to convert existing automated test architecture for use with a new testing tool. The entire testing project had to be converted for the new test automation software, and that included converting test scripts, over a dozen function libraries and hundreds of tables of testing data.
With a large number of projects to staff within budgetary and deadline limitations, expanding its internal Software Quality Assurance (SQA) department, and hiring and training additional employees was not an option. The client urgently needed to partner with a highly effective team of professionals that encompassed a diversified skill set, offered flexibility, expertise and had a proven track record of successful automated testing of vendor software.
PQA’s Impact: With some of the most experienced and skilled professionals in automated testing, PQA was chosen by the client to augment their internal SQA department. By generating increased efficiencies with automated solutions, we would help them maintain their competitive advantage by meeting the surging demands for customized products. PQA’s SQA team worked in tandem with the client’s internal SQA department to supplement their skill set. We adapted and executed a consistent framework for tests, updated existing test scripts, wrote new scripts, executed fully automated scripts and completed numerous rounds of regression.
For the tool conversion, we began the project by first becoming familiar with the client’s code and producing professional-quality documentation for all core project libraries, while simultaneously developing documentation standards to be used as the project continued. This value-added initiative readied PQA for a ‘running start’ when the client was ready to begin the conversion itself, and all remaining undocumented functions were documented as they were converted, leaving the client with full library documentation once the process was complete. To further streamline the project conversion, existing text processing tools were leveraged to automatically perform many of the more common steps in the conversion process.
Results: The automated testing was a complete success and the client was able to efficiently meet the growing demand for their popular customized product. Reducing the overall test execution phase, PQA’s automated tests and successful integration into their client’s dynamic test environment decreased the load on the client’s manual testers so they could focus on more complicated tasks.
The client was also pleased with PQA’s successful conversion of existing automated test architecture to a more robust and versatile tool, enabling faster and more inclusive testing. Improvements and upgrades to the project architecture now support multiple versions of the product under test. In addition, PQA’s value–added initiative to create full library documentation and high-quality code will facilitate future project management by ensuring test developers can work more efficiently, and by reducing the learning curve and training resources necessary for new testers. PQA continues to serve ongoing automation projects with this client.