Here's another tale in our series of field stories to show successful cases of ensuring quality and agility for dynamic enterprise apps. This case covers how a global high-tech manufacturer tested and delivered a demanding enterprise e-commerce site under time and budget.
In this case there was a lack of visibility and traceability that was posing a serious threat to mission critical business operations. Unlike some of our other cases, this company had complete control over the design and implementation of this complex multi-tier app, yet they still had no way to trace a single action to a single source in the maze of multiple service layers.
Ruston Vickers, iTKO's CTO & co-founder, worked on this effort. He said that before the test automation project, the company had to do manual sequential tests on each subcomponent to find error sources: "It was like having to place a plumber at every faucet to find the source of stoppage in a house with hundreds of rooms. Instead of having the plumbers yell back and forth across the large house as they progressed through the system, turning on faucets one step at a time, LISA gave the company an x-ray machine to see a top-down view of the entire system at once and determine the cause and effect."
This top-down viewing capability cut their best prior testing time in half. Formerly the company employed 10-15 consultants just to continually test only the end result UI behaviors of their system. Now, with a highly reusable and complete test suite in place through iTKO LISA, the consulting firm can conduct the same process with one part-time resource, at a higher level of accuracy, as the automation capabilities of LISA erase the margin for error inherent in manual testing.
The company is pleased with the reduced costs and increased speed of implementation, and the consultant on the project is pleased with the increased value they can provide to their client. With LISA they both have a reusable asset that will continue to provide value as they go forward together with new releases.
Reusable, continuous validation activities save hard dollars in testing labor costs, and the number of support costs incurred, but cost savings aren't the only value. In a customer-facing environment, eliminating 1-2 months of time to successful release can make a huge impact on incoming revenue potential.
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