Client Overview

    • Customer Description: Design, Engineering and Project Management Consultancy
    • Customer Location: Global
    • Delivery Method: Remotely from the Qualitest Technology Center (QTC)
    • Testing Delivered: Regression Testing and Test Suite upgrade

Business Needs and Objectives

The customer, Atkins, required a regression test of their web-based Service Desk Online (SDO) service, specifically the area that dealt with Incidents. This was in response to an upgrade to the SDO product. SDO is an online portal that enables users from all over the globe to manage their IT requirements, report incidents, create and assign tasks etc.

This was an ideal opportunity to deliver remote testing, removing the need for site presence and keeping costs down for Atkins through our QTC’s cost-efficient model.

Communication between the QTC and Atkin’s team was through on-demand online conferencing making the interaction easy and low cost.

Testing Needs

The upgrade did not introduce any new functionality. Most of the front end functionality was unaffected. Key areas were background applications supporting the product.

Atkins had an existing test suite to support testing the Incident area. The suite’s test scripts required enhancing as they were based on pre-existing system knowledge by the tester.

QualiTest was tasked with exercising all the regression test scripts and updating those scripts in order to remove the requirement of pre-existing system knowledge.

The Incident area of the SDO had been through extensive in-house System Integration Testing and final front-end regression testing was not anticipated to find any critical issues.

Issues Faced

The Incident test suite required review and an estimation was formulated to provide a formal statement of work. This was based on:

  • Projected time to gain familiarity of the environment
  • The number of scripts
  • The number of steps in each script
  • Time to run the scripts
  • Time required to update the scripts

Additionally a number of small change requests had been applied to the product, not all of which had been documented. Therefore, there was a focus on determining the relevance of each script to the latest upgraded solution.

There were no historical business workflows and the customer was unable to supply workflows in the timeframe. QualiTest needed to determine workflows to minimise the number of pre-requisites to run each script.

The Qualitest Solution

Qualitest would provide:

  • Documentation: Statement of Work, Test Review, Workflows, Test Exit Report
  • Verification and regression testing of SDO – Incident Area on the Test environment
  • Review and update of existing scripts, held on the SDO Production environment
  • Creation and management of raised defects

Success Achieved

Atkins provided a demonstration of the system for the QTC to gain familiarity. Based on this and the access given to the environment we were able to generate a Statement of Work and Test Review, which was demonstrated to Atkins, with an overview of the test approach. The customer was given an opportunity to amend or seek clarification on any aspects of the plan.

All tests were run and their scripts updated. Issues and observations were raised throughout testing and where possible, were fixed by Atkins. Once the list of these had been reviewed by Atkins, a Skype session was used to discuss and weed out known issues, identify new issues to be retested and correct any misinterpretations of the original test scripts.

Outstanding issues and observations were entered into the Test Exit Report. As anticipated no critical issues were found.

At the end of the engagement we had delivered:

  • A set of metrics to demonstrate the time required to complete and update the test set
  • An updated test set usable with just a basic understanding of the environment
  • A series of workflows to minimize repetition of work by creating pre-requisites required to exercise other scripts within the test suite
  • A Test Exit Report documenting all the tests executed, their status and additional details of any observations gained during the test cycle, submitted for approval
  • A proven ability to gain a working knowledge in a short time frame
  • A proven ability to provide test resource as and when the customer required

Due to extensive early planning, successful regression testing and a minimal number of issues, it was possible for there to be a timely conclusion to the engagement.

Key Benefits

  • Reduced dependence on stretched internal resource through availability of external expertise to conduct their regression tests
  • Reduced spend through the QTC’s flexible cost model
  • Enhanced scripts that do not require Atkins specialist knowledge to run. 60-70 enhanced scripts were ported into the production environment for use in future regression testing
  • Clear workflows that can be reused, minimizing pre-requisites needed to execute the test scripts
  • Confidence in the benchmark set by the QTC team for future engagements