A global banking client was faced with needing to release software into a live trading application which was used by their sales and trading teams in 20 countries. The system needed to be up and live 24/5.5. Brickendon’s experts successfully led a global agile programme to facilitate the testing of the client’s
ecommerce front-office application. Brickendon ensured the wide geographical spread of the application – across all 20 countries in APAC, Europe, US and Latin America – did not have down time nor negatively impact the quality of the software.
Client Challenges
The client had many challenges across the live trading and project landscape. These
included:
The ecommerce website was in multiple languages across multiple locations.
The teams in different regions had different requirements and priorities which need to
be assessed and aligned.
There was limited time windows for communication between teams in different regions
compounding the software quality issues and the ability to unify the strategy.
Significant capacity restraints as teams forced to complete development work and core
Business as Usual enhancements in addition to the rollout of an automated test harness.
Poor interaction and coordination between the development and test teams
Project timelines threatened due to misaligned sprint releases.
Business as Usual team not available for project work (including UAT, OAT and SIT)
leading to delays in releasing critical software upgrades to the production system.
Brickendon Solution
Brickendon implemented our own testing frameworks (TCPS and BEAPS) and
facilitated the client moving over to Agile methodologies. The work included:
Implemented Brickendon’s own TCPS (Time Check Point Solution) to modularise testing
and facilitate agile execution. TCPS is modularised set of test checkpoints which are used
to perform an accurate test estimation and execution in a highly agile fashion. This
enables BAs and developers, without testing expertise, to review the testing artefacts
and ensure good quality test design.
Introduced detailed acceptance criteria which was a prerequisite for any development
meaning the dev team could start TDD (Test Driven Development) before handing to test
team. The meant many bugs were solved by developers before entering formal testing.
Built an end-to-end test pack to ensure quality integration of all development buckets
Designed a unique agile test execution approach on BEAPs (Bucket Execution in Agile
Projects) which enabled the project team to successfully combat the critical misaligned
sprint issues & address issues associated with teams being spread around the globe
Implemented clear entry and exit criteria methods and an efficient test coverage matrix
methodology, simplifying the maintenance and ensuring thoroughness
Implemented an efficient retrospective methodology to effectively utilise lessons learnt.
Clients Benefits
The benefits realised by the change implemented by the Brickendon team
transformed the performance of the global team. These included:
After eight years of budget over runs and missed development deadlines, the team
within 12 weeks began delivering on time and budget which this was sustained for
the 3 years Brickendon managed the programme.
High quality of test design leading to shorter leads times for release of feature and
bug fixes.
Identification of critical issues early in the lifecycle, therefore avoiding costly delays
later in the project.
The Development team had clear exit criteria meaning before handing to Testing
Team. The results was the number of bugs the testing team found massively
decreased and software into production was much faster and of higher quality.
The issue of misaligned sprint releases was solved increasing the efficiency of the
all teams involved.
Standardisation of the test process with wider test coverage, decreased test
execution time and faster time to production system
Efficient and effective interaction between the teams despite being geographical
spread.