QA Testing Supporting Artist Payment System

The Performing Rights Organization (PRO) was facing an obstacle to effectively supporting their members.  

Overview

Royalty payments are the lifeblood for any creative artist, tracking usage, payments and distribution of those fees can be challenging. They needed to quickly address functionality gaps in their existing legacy systems or lose artists to emerging competitors. 

Strategy and Goals

As they launched this new effort, they knew that a critical part of the investment was ensuring quality releases. RCG was engaged by the performing rights organization as its testing partner and tasked with developing a Testing Methodology that was reusable, scalable, flexible and cost-effective.

At the core of the Testing, Methodology is the development of a testing framework that addresses manual, automated and load testing while providing a solid expandable basis for future enhancements and regression testing.

RCG deployed a dual-shore, distributed testing team consisting of experienced test and data analysts to perform test data preparation and execution. Testing was completed on schedule and within budget.

RCG deployed a dual-shore, distributed testing team consisting of experienced test and data analysts to perform test data preparation and execution. Testing was completed on schedule and within budget.

The partnership has continued over a variety of post-live projects including

• Testing of the Performing Rights System and the Member Access Application Enhancements
• Development of Production Support utilities (Web-based batch process monitoring application, EDI file validation)
• Load Testing (application and architectural)
• Testing of the Member Access Native and mobile web application for IOS/Android devices. This was a pilot project for the organization’s SCRUM implementation.

Moving to Scrum

When the performing rights organization decided to switch to a SCRUM methodology using Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS), RCG customized the testing methodology to adhere to the PRO’s version of SCRUM as well as their culture. The technical implementation of the testing methodology included:

• Configuration of TFS’ SCRUM template and Microsoft Test Manager
• Integration with MS Office365
• Training of the PRO’s staff
• Migration of artifacts from the current repositories
• Integration of TFS with the new PPM Tool

Technology

The initial Test Framework had at its core HP Quality Center and HP Functional Test (formerly QuickTest Pro). HP Load Runner was used for Load testing and IBM Rational DOORS was used for requirements. Various tools were developed in C# in combination with Oracle SQL Loader.

The move to SCRUM has TFS as the central repository for all project artifacts, Microsoft Test Manager as the Test Management Tool and CodeUI for future Test Automation.

The Final Results

The creation of the testing methodology (especially the test automation framework) gave the performing rights organization a reusable underlying framework that is repeatedly utilized to cover:

• New functionality
• Technology upgrades (new versions of Java, WebSphere)
• Different devices (native mobile applications)

The Conclusion

Artifacts developed in the initial project formed a basis for a comprehensive Regression Testbed that grew over time and can be repeatedly run, albeit with incremental adjustments.

Products are being delivered more quickly without sacrificing quality.

Although enhancements needed to be made owing to the paradigm shift introduced by SCRUM in terms of artifacts and the use of new tools, the framework essentially remains the same and seamlessly fits in the Continuous Integration environment required in SCRUM.