Case Study:

Tax & Audit Client – Strategic QA

An $8B+ financial services company recognized frustration in its IT stakeholder community comprised of staff and member firms. Prompted by a new CIO, the company endeavored to not only improve IT offerings and support but also the IT service experience, and tailor it to each audiences’ needs in a way that resonated with them. Additionally, the company wanted to focus time and resources on the highest prioritized IT services and support initiatives to enable greatest impact.

QAsis Labs was commissioned to define and drive strategic QA direction on the project. Quality metrics needed to be established across the program. Test automation was a necessity and streamlined implementation was required to ensure continued test coverage with a growing backlog of production ready features. System test cases were identified, developed and incorporated into initial validation and full end-to-end automation suites through a defined communication and authoring strategy, delivering valuable test coverage over the life of the project.

Challenges

  • Vendor separation for development and QA created a communication gap not ideal for establishing low maintenance in test automation
  • Lack of strategic leadership for quality on the program
  • QA team did not have core business knowledge around the audit process

Solution Profile

  • Created communication channels between QA and Development vendors with expectations on process
  • Strategic leadership was added in the form of a Quality Lead for the project overseeing QA and all other workstreams
  • Established learning sessions, requirements review, test case review and signoff processes to ensure business acceptance of test cases used for automation

Results

  • Opened channels between QA and Development teams which proved successful reducing new feature automation development time as well as maintenance costs
  • QA leadership provided much needed continuity between executive leadership and offshore QA technical team
  • Higher accuracy in automation test design and coverage was achieved through business knowledge transfer sessions and test case reviews