Our client is an Australian Government agency which provides trusted, impartial and influential advice and services to state and territory governments.
Opportunity
Our client, an Australian Government agency, had engaged an external vendor to provide a debt recovery solution to replace its legacy systems. Upon testing the viability of a new debt recovery solution, it had ran into challenges and issues which had caused extensive delays with product acceptance. Some of the issues reported were:
- Vendor testing scope and exit criteria not well defined.
- Lack of visibility on the status of testing and quality of product.
- Low-quality test design.
- Insufficient test coverage.
As a result of the delays, our client had missed key go-live dates, and being only midway through the project, were facing additional risks with its legacy systems nearing end of life.
Solution
With time being critical, the team at NRI were engaged to help it streamline the management of product defects and validate the product’s fit for purpose.
Our approach focused on:
- Refined test approaches, initiating re-plan of implementation timelines.
- Optimised triaging process fast tracking defect resolution.
- Updated test design and coverage initiating improved quality.
- Documentation of business processes to assist with triaging.
- Test Management tooling used to drive quality reporting, testing progress, and functional area categorisation.
- Delivery of requirements traceability, test scenarios, and regression testing.
With defined and streamlined test processes and outputs, our client was able to make an informed decision which resulted in the program being discontinued due to technical issues and defects posing further threat of delays and spiralling costs.
Following this event, product negotiations with the vendor were executed based upon enhanced reporting outcomes, and assurance executed by our team ensured risks were mitigated with the end-of-life systems.
Outcomes
The decision to cancel the program saved our client a significant amount of money in costs and allowed the agency to refocus on its needs.
Continuing on its digital transformation journey, our client’s notion of what constitutes superior quality has become much broader and includes overall user experience, quality of service (QoS), availability and performance, as well as security and privacy.
The new standard is that it is no longer sufficient that the application ‘just works’. It must provide an optimised experience that leaves the user wanting to engage more and interact again.