Target Group Limited

Date 17th September 2009

© Target Group Ltd 2009

Ala’a Shouaib MPhil, BSc, MBCS, CITP

Group Testing ManagerTarget Group Limited

Total Quality Management with Original Software

Introduction

• Target Group Overview• Target Challenges and

objectives• The Solutions• The vision

13th May 2008

© Target Group Ltd 2008

Target Group Overview

Target Group

Experts in lending, broking and general insurance systems, managed services and business process outsourcing

Two divisionsSoftware & services Loan & mortgage outsourced servicing

Financially sound for 30 yearsExperienced, ambitious management team300 staff in UK, Europe, Australia and New ZealandHeadquarters in Cardiff

Group Structure

Business Process Outsource

Broker Services

Target Loan ServicingEnd to End Loan lifecycle outsourced servicesTrial & Learn – start-up proof of concept services People, process and technology

Financial Solutions

Target Financial SolutionsEnd to End Loan ManagementProven and Robust Solutions Best of Breed Solution Components

General Insurance

Target Harlosh Multi market

- General - Reinsurance - Healthcare - Life - Bancassurance

Target Bluechip Full Application Support Intermediary Market Product Sourcing

Target Group clients

The Challenge

• Supporting Target product• Complex environment• Variety of business solutions• Test all products -comprehensive business solution• Testing infrastructure• Where we were and the testing process• (some point on environments)• limitations of legacy tools • UAT phase – took too long to complete

Mission Statement

“To continually improve the overall quality and reliability of Target’s software, to minimise the

risk of failure, maximise efficiency and to maintain and enhance the Target Group Ltd

image of high quality and standard.”

Test Strategy

Create an independent testing environment though the establishment of the Target “TestLab”

Introduce Test Automation via the use of a testing tool

Introduce Regression Testing to maximise efficiency

Target TestLab

Physical Infrastructure

X Series 16G

X Series 16G

X Series 16G

X Series 16G

Lat -1 Lat -2 Lat -3 Lat -4 Lat -5 Lat -6 Lat -7

Curr -1 Curr -2 Curr -3 Curr -4 Curr -5 Curr -6 Curr -7

XSeries

16G

XSeries

16G

XSeries

16G

Backup Disk/tape drive

Vm1 Vm2

Vm3 Vm4

Vm5 Vm6

Vm7

XSeries

16G

VMware ESX

NAS Hard Disk

Future Scalability

System iAS400

Testing Tools

Goals Automate 20% of all manual testing saving £73,920 pa

Perform a true “end to end” regression testing across all products

Automate 80% of all regression testing

Deliver fully tested solutions to clients faster

Automation to complement manual testing, wider test coverage of new and re-developed applications

Establish a central repository to manage and record all testing activities

Comply with BSI’s quality standard for traceability and software quality

Tool Selection

Key Requirements

Environment Management for Regression TestingManage the test environments with rollback to pre-determined checkpoints, rather than restoring data at the start and manually return to a point where the error was created saving time when errors corrected

Consolidation of Diagnostic InformationJob Log, Database effects, Data rules, Parameters passed between programs, Data Queue and Message Queue data and the testing of batch jobs all presented for effective diagnosis reducing the time spent by Development finding cause of errors

Easy to Record TestsMore tests created and run in the time frame resulting in increased test coverage

Ability to De-sensitise Customer DataCustomer data can be scrambled to comply with the Data Protection Act

Key Requirements

Simple Updating of Test when Applications ChangeTests can be amended quickly and then run to enable the software to go live sooner, without the need for intervention by Development team

No Scripting Language – Code freeScripting restricts the audience of potential users as well as increases the effort required for creating and amending tests.

Manual Testing SupportProvides a record of errors and actions for replication.

Planning and ManagementEnables effective planning, team communication, and accurate tracking of every testing activity. Management have real time metrics to make informed and risk assessed decisions

Conclusion

Conclusion

High Level Benefits: Ability to automate 20% of all manual testing at an estimated

annual saving of 70+K Target are able to deliver regression testing for the first time

80% automated Deliver quality solutions to clients and in a shorter time Improved inter departmental cooperation between Testing

and Development Greatly improve the overall Quality of software delivered to

clients Automating repetitive manual testing – greater cost

saving Testing efforts beyond just system/functionality testing

Conclusion

The benefits of our test automation tool to date are: fewer issues to be solved less rework to be tackled give us the confidence in ourselves and the products we

sell give our customers greater confidence in our products and

services provide documented test evidence to customers/auditors

Original’s solution helped us in achieving the ultimate objective of:

better quality software delivered in shorter timescales

Target Group Limited Date 17th September

2009© Target Group Ltd 2009

www.TargetGroup.net

www.origsoft.com

Thank you