The client is one of the leading US-based manufacturers of home appliances operating globally and possessing several trademarks offering an extensive blend of products.
The customer’s software under test incorporates B2B and B2C dimensions.
B2B solutions embrace:
B2C software encompasses:
Aiming to reduce the hosting cost and improve overall organizational performance, the client was undergoing migration to SAP Hybris Commerce Platform. To assure its quality by thorough UAT, introduce test automation best practices, build performance testing from scratch, and shape QA processes, the client pitched on a1qa.
a1qa jump-started delving into the technical core of the solutions, which is based on the seamless interaction of back- and front-end.
Front-end involves:
Back-end incorporates:
Having learned all products’ bells and whistles, the engineers got down to quality assurance scope.
Functional testing regarding the Hybris customizable features encompassed:
In terms of AEM, the engineers were ensuring the proper operation of the newly developed templates and components.
UAT incorporated verifications to make sure the whole functionality scope was operating as it was intended, and the correct information was passed between various system components. Test cases representing real user scenarios included detailed steps from opening the website to buying a certain product. The QA team also developed scenarios that comprised the actions of business users like checking multiple configurations in Hybris.
Besides, specific reference concerns the business type of verifications carried out on the SAP side, which include deeper test coverage (accuracy while creating invoices, disposal of goods, transfer of products between warehouses, etc.).
Test automation with its primary objectives of speeding up time to market and reducing operational costs was the pivotal tool to streamline the testing scope.
Automated smoke tests were performed against the operation of the above-mentioned architecture. The essential part of tested functionality concerned placing orders. To do this, certain preconditions should be met (e.g., the product of a definite type, possessing a certain function).
The verification of selecting this product looks the following way. The automated test requests Hybris through the API and searches for the necessary item. Afterward, it’s chosen on the website and placed as an order. As soon as the transaction is performed, SAP creates the message about the successful operation, the presence and details of which are checked by this test.
Test automation introduction was effective: only in the past two months, it contributed to saving 50 business days of the manual testing team consisting of 4 people. All in all, test automation by a1qa curtailed the time required for smoke testing by 90%.
The client already had the team responsible for this direction. To increase its efficiency, a1qa built the testing process from scratch and leveraged a user behavior approach.
The engineers prepared user journeys emulating realistic load, which later became the baseline for scripts. Then, the team fine-tuned the basic approach to developing scripts to enhance the level of detail. If even less than 1% of users fulfilled a certain activity, it was added to the list. Scripts were updated before each release due to the ongoing functionality augmentation.
Afterward, all solutions were verified before each release by harnessing the activities listed below:
Suggested performance testing improvements:
It was intended to guarantee seamless integration of:
Each payment platform possesses issues that may occur during money transactions. After entering, credit data is sent to the system for validation. The type of response depends on the variants of the issues spotted or the situations of accepting the data. The tests check that all those types are considered by the system and are validated correctly. For testing on production environment, the team harnessed only real credit cards provided by the client.
Considering complex taxation in the USA, it was vital to make sure the correct tax is assigned to a certain state. Taxes are calculated in the following way. The request for a certain tax is sent to Vertex, then the number received is transferred to an order. After this order is created in SAP, the process repeats once again to ensure the maximum accuracy. Testing helped guarantee the absence of software glitches.
Apart from testing, a1qa contributed to reinforcing the range of QA activities:
Release support scheme
The client delivers new functionality once every 2-3 weeks. To ensure the quality releases and compliance with deadlines, a1qa designed a training course for all the talents joining the project. Should any necessity to augment the team preparing for the release arises, the engineers are swiftly redeployed to support the process.
Smart team scalability
To cover workload in terms of multiple subprojects, the number of engineers was augmenting to handle the increased testing scope and decreasing when the workload was reducing.
Process alignment
Due to multiple subprojects, each group followed its own habitual patterns that resulted in a desynchronized testing process. To increase organizational performance, a1qa unified the standard pool of tasks carried out by the QA experts — from defect validation to new feature testing.
Transition to Agile
Initially, only UAT followed Agile practices. However, having demonstrated its perks like efficient defect fixing and communication with developers, faster time to market, clean code, etc., a1qa contributed to shifting QA support scope to Kanban.
Quality level assessment
The work fulfilled by multiple teams was evaluated according to miscellaneous systems, which impeded the overall assessment of system quality. To standardize it, a1qa set up a unified approach to an impartial evaluation of the quality level within teams.
PI planning
At times, user stories weren’t detailed, which caused the lack of requirements for preparing test cases or the necessity to raise additional questions while conducting a test run. Therefore, a1qa joined the client’s regular meetings to plan the workload, provide and discuss insights on the proper system operation. A team of business analysts was also assigned to identify and clarify the requirements.
Adjusting to the client’s time zone
To reach the maximum overlap in time, sync up, and solve process questions together, a1qa set the rule for all its members to move additional activities (self-education) to the second part of each business day.
Mitigating risks
To eliminate the possibilities of downtime, a1qa developed a roster for all the QA teams. Continuous monitoring and defect fixing were observed due to introducing 4-hour shifts.
Strengthening organizational performance
Particular efforts encompassed fixing pitfalls that occurred on the side of 3rd party vendors, which led to an increase in operational costs and testing time. Having analyzed their root causes, a1qa created a report describing them. It allowed the client to reassess the efficiency of all the teams involved in product development and testing to eliminate bottlenecks.
Bumps in the road occurred due to software architecture hallmarks:
Problems within Accertify
Its configuration is close to the production environment. Therefore, the number of orders placed by the engineers for 1 day from 1 IP address was limited due to business requirements. To bypass them, a1qa added extra addresses to the lists.
Data glitches
They involve the cases of incorrect or insufficient data filling in while working in the admin panel. As a result, products aren’t configured correctly, the data is corrupted that causes errors during test runs. Therefore, a1qa applied BAPI calls in SAP used by the website during product placement to validate goods. In case of success, the product is included into tests.
