The client is a large commercial retail cosmetics company which markets through online, wholesale partners, a home shopping channel, and over 200 stores worldwide.
The client is deploying a large amount of changes throughout their POS, OMS and e-commerce systems to deploy throughout their online presence and all of their retail stores around the world. As a strategic client partner, Qualitest helped identify quality risks while managing all of the testing efforts for these changes. Before this engagement started, the testing efforts suffered from low maturity; there were test cases, some documentation and no reporting metrics.
The client approached Qualitest for assistance in Functional Testing, Regression Testing, and Bug Duplication.
• Functional Testing: Regular code releases required functional test planning, scripting, and execution.
• Regression Testing: Regular code releases required execution of the regression test set.
• Bug Duplication: In addition to defects found in code releases in the lab via testing, the POS team needed support addressing and duplicating issues reported from the field.
Qualitest’s 7-month 13-person effort created and implemented a test strategy while building all required testing assets and processes to successfully support this complex engagement.
Qualitest quickly assembled resources, led by a Senior Test Specialist and composed of a dedicated on-shore team and a large off-shore team.
Daily deliverables included new test cases (added via Excel, saved to SharePoint), test cases executed (including screenshots, PASS/FAIL indications, and bugs logged from failed test cases), and new bugs (using RTS). Weekly deliverables included team performance evaluations for all team members (including managers and engineers) and a weekly summary (metrics such as test cases executed, bugs found, progress percentage, etc.) for each project.
With each new code release, Qualitest executed the established regression test. When validating functional enhancements, Qualitest developed and executed thorough functional test plans based on the defined functional requirements, resulting in step-by-step manual test scripts with clear expected results.
Qualitest worked with POS team members to overhaul the POS regression testing set, accounting for features and functions not yet introduced when the set was first created.
Often working directly with store personnel, Qualitest was able to duplicate and document critical defects initially discovered in the field, providing the POS vendor with a roadmap for resolution.
We worked jointly with the client to improve the quality and coverage of documentation supporting the system design and for enhancements. In addition, the client was introduced to and educated on the use of reporting metrics.
At the end of regression testing, Qualitest laid out a plan for automation.
Qualitest immediately became a vital contributor: identifying and escalating numerous critical issues before they reached the field, serving as a key liaison to the retailer’s POS vendor, providing management with high-level test result summaries to aid in ‘Go/No-Go’ decisions, and quickly becoming the organization’s POS lab guru.
Qualitest flexible, diligent work in the POS lab took an immense amount of time and resource pressure off the retailer’s POS team. The POS team considered the engagement a complete success, and extended Qualitest’s involvement well beyond the original project.
Gaps and risks were identified early in the process, catching bugs earlier and avoiding project delays. We improved and increased test coverage, and developed an automation plan.
• Right-shoring helped reduce cost
• Quick ramp-up time
• Testing operations overall were made more mature
• Testing efforts were aligned with business needs
• Coverage was vastly improved
• Alignment was assured between systems
• Pre-defined KPIs ensured a high level of deliverables
Multiple Configurations: Testing a POS application with different settings and configurations is difficult. Test cases should be designed covering each and every scenario (valid or invalid) in detail.
Complex interfaces: Integration of POS System involves numerous interconnected systems and third party elements.
