AST Case Study

The testing operation in AST, which is the biggest delivery unit in the company, is categorized into three major categories. The first is unit testing, the second is system integration testing which is done when all of the individual modules that were tested in the unit testing are combined, and the third is UAT - user acceptance testing.
According to Mohita, before she arrived, testing was all done in silos using Excel, and each project manager had a different way of testing. There were different processes, different metrics, and there was no centralized location for all of the testing resources, no centralized repository, and no standardization of methodology.

At that point, senior management realized that testing should be standardized. Mohita was hired to create standardization and unification of all testing projects into one centralized hub. So as to create, a central location for all testing needs of the AST organization.
The first step Mohita took was to create a centralized testing repository that would contain the most important test scripts of all 40 different modules that they implement for their customers.
The second step on Mohita’s list was to manage all of AST’s testing in one place. Previously all their testing was managed with spreadsheets and they wanted to shift over to an ALM tool.
The third step was making sure that the ALM tool integrates with Jira. AST were long time Jira users when it came to managing their testing Issues. That meant they had a lot of historical data in Jira that they wanted to keep using. Mohita had to make sure that all of AST’s data related to testing; manual testing, automated testing, and Jira, was in one location, so AST could show a unified front to clients.

AST chose to build their new center of excellence using PractiTest. Mohita started with her first assignment - She built a Test repository using PractiTest to unify all testing in AST. “We started with the largest delivery unit which was a perfect business case for creating the centralized repository. This particular unit had 75 generic business processes, functionalities, which tests could easily be reused from one project to another.” Using PractiTest’s Test Library module, the team managed to consolidate hundreds and thousands of pages of test scripts into one repository of generic documentation. This centralized repository is serving the entire organization. It contains generic versions of test scripts, that could be customized and re-used as per project need and can easily be updated quarterly according to new Oracle releases.
The second task was to centralize all testing activities and move it from spreadsheets to PractiTest. All test scripts and Test Sets and were uploaded to PractiTest’s Test Library and Test Sets & Runs modules. PractiTest adoption was gradual, and the more people worked with it, the more they realized the time it saves them. Eventually, the team started using the requirements module to show requirements traceability to their customers. “The advanced traceability functionality PractiTest provided, allowed us to show clients that every requirement that AST has received from them has been mapped to a test script and that test script was run and so on.”
The third task was to integrate PractiTest with Jira. For issues, AST used Jira exclusively so they integrated PractiTest to Jira which allowed them to report all issues directly from their runs to Jira tickets.

Mohita mentions two things that stood out for her in PractiTest. “Number one is its simplicity. PractiTest is a tool that is simple to learn, simple to teach, and simple to implement. It is very intuitive. The second thing is their support. Anytime I have any question about PractiTest; if I want to understand a functionality or the simplest of questions to the most complex ones, everything gets answered very quickly and in a very nice and friendly way. The support staff is very good, they are very knowledgeable and eager to help. Every question I ask gets answered in 10 minutes or less. We might not be PractiTest’s biggest customer, but they make us feel like we are their biggest customers and they make us feel that we are very important to them.”

Using PractiTest for their TCOE creation allowed the AST team to standardize their operation creating a framework and a disciplined approach, but still have continuous evolution of these standardized processes and templates. Moreover, PractiTest’s unified dashboard and reports made sure the stakeholders of each project are always up to date with every important change.