An associated bank corporation engages Apex to provide a solution to modernize and streamline its QA practice.
SITUATION
The client’s enterprise QA team was struggling to handle the workload and subject matter expertise required for testing product applications thoroughly and efficiently. The offshore team was returning inconsistent results, which lowered the product teams’ confidence in QA. Consequently, product team members outside the QA space assumed testing roles, which undermined existing processes and deviated from proper QA best practices. To bring stability, reliability, and expertise to the SDLC end-to-end testing process, Apex recommended moving to an embedded QA team structure with dedicated roles and a uniform, repeatable Agile QA process.
Overall, in order to achieve the product quality the client’s customers were demanding, the client needed to modernize functionality, content, and user experience. The key to accomplishing this evolution was determined to be a strong, consistent QA practice focused on a People/Process/Tooling model. Following a period of observation, documentation research, and intensive interviews, Apex delivered the necessary process improvements and roadmap recommendations to create a mature, effective QA practice for the client’s products.
SOLUTION
Apex evaluated existing QA practices (people, processes, and tooling) and looked for opportunities to improve and/or implement QA practices with an eye to improving product quality. The team elicited pain points, process gaps, and ‘wish lists’ to create individual custom solution recommendations for each of ten products. Close collaboration with the client’s Business Systems Managers, Application Owners, and QA Leads provided the necessary information to tailor each solution to its associated product.
Apex’s solutions focused on a ‘shift left’ mindset, starting with embedded QA teams dedicated to early testing, defect prevention, and test automation. This approach allowed the client to lower its cost-of-service for all testing and reduce time to market through sound Agile practices, leading the way to a DevOps model with CI/CD.
Accelerated speed to market
RESULTS
Apex’s Agile-based solution modernized and streamlined the client’s QA practice, allowing for iterative, continuous test cycles/sprints and frequent rapid feedback loops. Apex was able to reduce QA resource costs by 25% through more efficient use of labor and tool licensing costs by $300,000 by introducing open source options. Embedded QA teams practicing Agile methodology also accelerated delivery and time to market, enabled continuous improvement through the product lifecycle, and increased the efficiency of all testing phases from unit testing through UAT.
