How We Successfully Deployed 150 Test Cases for a Medication Management Web App

Our client is a San Diego biotech company which developed a cloud hosted web application that synchronizes medications across all patient levels, including pharmacy, nursing, and IT to provide patients with the correct dosage and avoid costly mistakes.

When we joined the project in June 2018, the client needed a way to successfully test its software under a wide range of circumstances to ensure fast, secure, and quality delivery.

Testing is especially important in the medical industry where the correct functioning of an application can be a life and death matter. The end goal of any software testing program is to reduce manual overhead, gain faster response times, and ensure all tests are consistent with expected outcomes.

While our initial client engagement focused on manual testing, our Integrant team was soon able to transition the client to an automated test environment that increased performance, efficiency, and overall business value. This is the story of our successful partnership!

Developing an automated testing framework is never a simple or straightforward path. Each application and environment will present its own unique set of challenges. But when it comes to the medical industry, application systems and protocols are generally very complex.
In working with our biotech client, the first challenge was primarily technical. We were confronted with a considerably complex, high stakes environment that involved interactions with three different infrastructures, 4-5 ways to import data into the medication management system, and hundreds of screens for managing that data.

We needed to understand the application well enough so we could write down the test cases and run the scenarios correctly.

The next element involved the business challenges – primarily relationship building with our client, coordinating workflows, and setting up a distributed team across Egypt, Jordan, and San Diego. As will be demonstrated below, we addressed these challenges primarily by adopting an agile approach that focused on transparency, collaboration and relationship-building.

Building an integrated testing automation environment within a complex medication management application certainly presented us with a number of technical and business challenges.
However, through an agile approach comprised of daily standups, sprint planning, and sprint retros, we helped ensure everyone was on the same page and in agreement about our testing plan.
As a result, we were able to engineer a test automation environment that increased time to market, improved efficiency, and reduced cost. Here are the best practices and “soft skills” we adopted that helped us deliver that value to our client.

We needed to understand the application well enough so we could write down the test cases and run the scenarios correctly.

The next element involved the business challenges – primarily relationship building with our client, coordinating workflows, and setting up a distributed team across Egypt, Jordan, and San Diego. As will be demonstrated below, we addressed these challenges primarily by adopting an agile approach that focused on transparency, collaboration and relationship-building.

Transitioning our client from a manual to an automated testing environment required not just agility but a different mindset. Enter our 4Plus1 Shadow Engineering Program !

The crux of this program involves adding another engineer to a project for every four billable engineers, so they can “shadow” and become easily integrated into an existing workflow.

This approach enables us to rotate our engineers across departments more seamlessly and provides each team member with 10 “free” weeks to be used for technical and soft skills retraining. This system not only encourages a healthy work-life balance but leads to higher retention and better employee morale.

When we kicked off work with our biotech client, we immersed ourselves in learning the environment through reading documentation, asking questions, and conducting client meetings to fill in gaps.

Thanks to the discipline provided by the 4Plus1 program, our developers were already accustomed to an agile mindset and able to adapt quickly to the complex needs of this new project. If someone requested vacation, for example, project work continued uninterrupted because we could just integrate another developer who was already engaged and knew how to step in.

Another pillar of success behind our 4Plus1 program is how we undertake knowledge management. We’ve found that conducting data dumps and briefings with the client and then recording those into videos provides a very useful resource for onboarding our new engineers.

We’ve also created a Sharepoint environment where we post the videos and other supporting documentation on the testing standards that we ask our engineers to review. Gathering these materials is a lot of work but we’ve found the tradeoff is well worth the effort. The payoff is the increased efficiencies we’ve seen as we’ve rotated new engineers into the project.

At Integrant, we are always committed to exceeding our client’s expectations every time. We believe one of the secrets that keeps us so focused and efficient is our flexible work schedule. If someone wishes to start their work hours early and leave early or start late and leave late, we leave that up to them – as long as the client’s core hours are covered. Being flexible has really enhanced and strengthened our team culture and given us a sense of ownership that benefits both our client and our team.

This flexibility also helps us to stay organized and efficient. For example, to set everyone up for success, the team added a centralized repository of tools and resources to help facilitate our agile workflows, including testing tools (Selenium), deployment (Octopus), cloud hosting (Azure), and content and data facilitating (SharePoint) to name a few.

But every good process can still become better. As our team’s involvement on this test automation project grew, we realized the need for another level of transparency and accountability.

To facilitate this, we adopted a rigorous peer review process to gather and discuss each user story to make sure everyone was on the same page. We also adopted a series of exit interviews, discussions on resourcing, and stepped in to address gaps in information where necessary. The last step was a final review and spell check before handing over the user stories to the client.

One of the core principles behind our success as a team in general and with our approach to test automation implementation in particular, is our focus on building strong relationships with our clients. During our client engagement over the past two years, we visited onsite half a dozen times and especially during critical peaks around major software releases.

These frequent visits created a sense of shared respect. The client saw and appreciated our commitment and began to trust us implicitly to work independently. We integrated in extremely well into their workflows and established a collaborative process that is extremely organized and efficient. In fact, the favor was returned when our client’s Quality Global Lead came to visit the Integrant offices in Egypt and Jordan to show appreciation and solidarity with our team efforts.

Since kicking off our partnership with our biotech client in June 2018, many things have changed. Our original aim was to undertake manual testing on their medication management application. But as we became integrated into the project and deployed our agile best practices for managing a large distributed team, the client quickly took notice. We started participating in some of the automation testing efforts onsite and before long the client entrusted us to write the remaining user stories and automated tests. Two years and 150 test cases later, the partnership remains very strong!

Based upon our strong relationship-building approach, we’ve worked hard to create a safe, efficient, and transparent culture that makes our client happy and eager to work with us. So much, in fact, that our collaboration has the feel of a big “family.” The Integrant team eagerly looks forward to continuing this excellent partnership and building on these synergies to develop ongoing benefits and value for our valued client.

Looking to put your complex business domain in safe, trusted hands? Connect with our expert technical team today for a free consultation or find out how you can experience the Integrant difference for two sprints with no strings attached. Complete the form below!

Manual to Automation Testing: How We Successfully Deployed 150 Test Cases for a Medication Management Web App

Being agile helped us transition our biotech client from manual to automated testing saving time, money, and plenty of headaches

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