QA Processes Assessment for an Industrial Automation Company

Executive Summary

• Goals: Our client needed to analyze 16 QA-related areas to better understand the current state of their quality assurance processes and test automation strategy.
• Solution: Performed an intense 5-day remote workshop with key stakeholders and assessed business and technical aspects of the company’s QA processes. Formed a dedicated QA Automation team of 8 FTEs, engaged in the development of a hybrid solution for test automation.
• Benefits: Provided quality assurance matrix, along with roadmap and specific recommendations on gaps & issues improvement, helping to optimize and improve QA-related processes.
• Services Delivered: Quality assurance consulting

About Client

The client, part of a global leader with a century-long history of success, is a leading supplier of industrial automation solutions. The company’s solutions help businesses automate their processes, maximize production, optimize costs, and protect their personnel and environment. Based in Texas, USA, the company serves numerous industries, including chemical, oil & gas, refining, pulp & paper, power, water & wastewater treatment, metals & mining, food & beverage, pharmaceutical & others.

• Client: Leading Industrial Automation Company
• Industry: Industrial Automation
• Location: US
• Employees: 10,000+

Business Challenge

When our client contacted us, they weren’t fully satisfied with the automation level of their quality assurance processes. For the company, it is imperative to provide bug-free high-quality software that would be utilized for manufacturing purposes. Thus, QA processes automation has become one of our client’s priorities these days.

The client was looking for a proficient partner with domain knowledge in QA processes optimization. Specifically, they were interested in an in-depth analysis of 16 QA-related areas and their comparison with the industry best practices.

We offered the client to conduct a QA assessment that would provide a comprehensive overview of the customer’s quality assurance processes and help discover possible gaps in their QA strategy. The client highly approved our approach to the assessment, its model, and its structure.

The client also needed to decide on a new autotesting tool that would replace Coded UI, a test automation framework that Microsoft was gradually phasing out and soon would no longer support. We had to perform a thorough study of the most suitable options that would match the technical and business requirements of the client.

Solution

Our team conducted an intense 5-day remote workshop with key stakeholders and assessment of both business and technical aspects of the client’s QA processes in line with our QA Assessment packaged service. In 2 weeks of processing the assessment outcomes according to the TPI Next Agile methodology, we discovered that the company’s QA processes had a high level of maturity and there were only three of sixteen target areas that needed improvement upon the highlighted gaps.

Our QA team demonstrated excellent flexibility in collaboration with a customer during the COVID-19 upsurge. The worldwide lockdown made us change the conventional cooperation model and switch to the remote working mode by organizing online sessions with all the stakeholders involved. 

Here’s what our team achieved within a 3-week remote QA assessment project:

• Analyzed 16 QA-related areas, utilized tools, artifacts, techniques, and methodology of our client’s System Integration and Automation Infrastructure teams.
• Built QA processes maturity matrix highlighting specific gaps discovered in the company’s test management, environment setup, test automation framework, source control management, CI/CD framework, and dashboards/metrics.
• Provided the client with specific recommendations and possible solutions related to the defined issues.
• Thoroughly analyzed tools for test automation to replace Coded UI.
• Created proofs-of-concepts (PoCs) for utilizing Selenium WebDriver, TestComplete, and Ranorex, and provided a detailed tools evaluation matrix to help our client’s teams select the most suitable option.
• Came up with the idea of integrating Selenium WebDriver and WinAppDriver as a hybrid framework to run autotests for both web and desktop applications.

The client’s System Integration and Automation Infrastructure teams were highly cooperative, helpful, and ready to share any information needed. The high level of stakeholders’ engagement and well-organized online sessions by our team were instrumental in the success of the QA assessment that we conducted fully remotely.

Technologies

• TPI Next – a framework for test process improvement
• Automation testing tools used for PoC and rapid prototyping:
• Selenium WebDriver
• TestComplete
• Ranorex

Business Value

By conducting an in-depth QA analysis, we helped the client to identify the maturity level of their QA processes, including their weak points and ways to address them:

• Our team provided the customer with a detailed roadmap describing specific steps for improvement divided into three phases. By following our recommendations, the client would be able to optimize their QA processes and achieve the necessary level of automation.
• Developed PoCs and a detailed comparison of automated testing tools allowed the customer to decide on the solution that would replace Coded UI and completely fit in with their automation architecture and engineering practices. Thus, the open-source solution Selenium WebDriver was chosen as it offers faster test performance and perfectly aligns with our client’s engineering practices.

Our proven record in QA processes automation made the client interested in further collaboration with our company as a reliable partner in software development and testing, resulting in the development of a hybrid solution for test automation. This solution idea stems from the Selenium WebDriver PoC, which the industrial automation company chose among other compared tools.  

Integration of Selenium WebDriver with WinAppDriver enables a framework that simplifies running autotests on both web and desktop applications.