Testing of Business Modelling Software

Customer

The Customer is a company providing high-tech services in all sectors of the economy, including complex consulting, project management in the fields of building and reforming business processes, creating a client IT infrastructure and telecommunication space, as well as outsourcing in various fields.

Challenge

The Customer had a specialized business modeling tool designed to develop full-scale financial and economic models and to support their further functioning. The project was formerly outsourced to the vendor who developed an unreliable architecture and disorganized codebase. Due to the product instability, the Customer couldn’t generate any revenue and pass the Platform Tests (including compatibility testing) for Windows Client to be certified by Microsoft and earn Microsoft Points. Therefore, they came to ScienceSoft to entrust us the further development of the product. The challenge was that major refactoring of the product could postpone the release date of the application.

Solution

During the first testing stage, ScienceSoft’s dedicated team discovered a large number of defects in existing functionalities, and bug fixing started. Following a strict schedule, in less than a month the dedicated team performed pre-certification (QA consulting effort) and prepared the software product for the Microsoft Platform Test, which was successfully passed.

Stabilization phase started simultaneously with bug fixing and code refactoring phases. A special checklist covering all possible requirements that could be affected in the process of code refactoring was designed. The smoke test was executed for every new build. Once the smoke test of the system passed, the testing team proceeded with executing an appropriate test suite. The regression testing phase included re-running the developed test suites and checking whether previously fixed bugs would reappear. Regression testing was executed at the end of each code refactoring phase.

To meet the deadline, ScienceSoft's specialists proposed to automate the testing of the functionality that could be affected by changes. ScienceSoft’s automated testing specialists implemented an automated test framework and test scripts covering critical issues on time and integrated them in daily building of new version before the critical changes had been made. 55 test scenarios were automated for a daily run.

Results

Automated test scripts helped to detect critical defects that had appeared as a result of implemented changes. This allowed the development team to immediately fix them and to release the new stable version of the application on time.

The new stable version of the application was released and paved the way to new business opportunities and increased revenue. Passing Microsoft software tests permitted the Customer to earn Microsoft Points and to become a Certified Microsoft Partner, improving the company’s image.

Standards, Technologies and Tools

.NET Framework 3.5, Entity Framework, LINQ, Segue SilkTest, C# 3.0, ISO9001, GAMP4