Roq Delivers a 95% Time Saving in Testing of Digital Transport Solution

The Client 

Roq’s client, a technology company specialising in digital railway and transport solutions, has over 50 years of industry experience managing and understanding signalling control, operations management, and logistics.

With responsibility for keeping public transport moving, they had a requirement to test a web-based digital traffic management application, specifically designed to help control trains on specific lines across the UK rail network.

Their ethos is to never fail to deliver, correlating closely to the Roq core value of ‘Commitment’.

Their use of Agile development methods, data gathering, advanced algorithms, and Business Intelligence (BI) reporting facilitates their ability to deliver innovative traffic management services to the UK rail network.

The Client needed a reliable partner with experience and expertise in testing complex services, who was familiar with the most advanced coding and deployment practices, and who could help them assure the highest quality when implementing their mission-critical system.

They previously used business users and in-house subject matter experts (SME’s) to manually test a highly complex bespoke system involving numerous manual steps and large datasets.  However, this approach was prone to manual error and time-consuming and costly. The business users were also diverted from their core responsibilities for prolonged periods, with a resultant negative impact on the business.

Roq’s experience and expertise helped to identify ways of accelerating the user testing process, whilst improving quality, and freeing up the Client’s SME’s to enable them to focus on their core responsibilities. The Client’s overriding requirement was to use test automation to reduce the overall time for the regression testing of their bespoke system.

The Client required that the project be completed within tight timescales.  

Roq’s Solution

Roq quickly mobilised a team and worked with the Client to identify the set of high-priority set of tests to automate first. These tests covered the core functionality of the application and had an estimated testing timescale of one week of manual effort to complete for a team of 4-5 testers.

Due to the unique and complex nature of the application, Roq used a Java-based framework built with Cucumber, Maven, and Spring Boot to complete the automation pack.

The Roq team developed over 350 automated scripts consisting of more than 1,050 unique tests and covered the agreed high-priority areas of the client’s application. To support Continuous Delivery these scripts were run overnight, on a regular basis, through an Azure pipeline and published to Allure.

Due to the complex nature of the system, data sourcing to fulfil the tests had always proved challenging. The team overcame this by working closely with the client’s development team, utilising their APIs to source the relevant data for testing. 

The Outcome  

• A 95% time saving – we reduced the testing of agreed high-priority tests from c.20 days manual effort, to an automated pack that can be run overnight

• The client benefited from increased confidence in new deployments resulting in them being able to increase the system’s functionality more quickly

• As a result of Roq’s engagement, the client now has an easily maintainable, automated regression suite, that they can self-manage and maintain

• The solution has enabled the clients SME’s to spend more of their time on other business activities, and less time on manual testing; and

• Test Automation is now used to focus on those areas that impact the business most whilst improving quality at a faster pace.

If you’d like to find out more about how Roq can support your business, please email us at ask@roq.co.uk.