QA Automation for an Independent Investment Advisor

Business Domain :This solution provider offershelp manage the QA activities and provide
financial advice on 401 K portfolios to employeesmaintenance for the current product.
of large business enterprises. In addition to Technology Challenges  Development of
offering advice regarding the components of theautomated testing framework to support the
401 K portfolio, the software solution developedcomplexity of functionality and multiple levels of
by the company can automatically manage theintegrations with the financial institutions and
portfolio by changing its constituent stocks andcorporate employers • Keeping the automated
mutual funds as the financial goals change with thetest suites up-to-date while the software is
age of a person and the financial environment alsoevolving with every release.
changes. It’s personalized advisory services Infogain’s Solution Infogain organized a team
are designed to meet the needs of all types ofof test and development engineers to develop a
investors. Whether the advice is accessed online,comprehensive QA regression test suite for the
on paper, by phone, in consultation with anclient. Infogain decided to incrementally automate
advisor, or through a managed account program,the regression test suite so that the part for
each investor can count on consistent advice andwhich the automation is completed can be
investment recommendations unique to their goalsdeployed immediately and an immediate ROI is
and specific investment holdings.realized. While the development team developed
Business Challenges : In order to actively managethe new release, the testing team worked on
the 401 K portfolio of employees from multipleautomating the regression test suite at the same
corporations, the software engine of thistime. Infogain’s automated testing framework
company has to get connected to a large numberincluded re-usable libraries that enabled the team
of financial institutions who manage the 401 Kto develop automated test suite with less effort
accounts of these employees. • At the otherand avoiding the need for re-writing the code for
end, the software engine has to connect with thecommon business functions. The Infogain team
employers and employees to whom the financialdevised a comprehensive test automation
advice is provided. This type of complexdevelopment approach that included: •
integration with financial institutions, non-uniformKnowledge transfer for understanding of
functioning of individual record keeper, security ofapplication flows • Test case documentation
financial data, and complexity of portfolioand approval • Test automation and execution
management domain makes manual testing of the• Verification of automated test scripts •
software solution very time consuming. •Closure and acceptance A test execution
Every time a new release of software wasenvironment was setup to run the completed
produced, it took over 4-5 months to completepart of the test suite at regular intervals. As the
the testing in addition to the development effortnew set of automated test cases were created,
of 2 months. The client wanted to complete newthey were added to the run-time environment for
release within 3 months with 2 months ofexecution and thereby incrementally increasing the
development and 2 months of testing with 1level of automation and reducing the effort
month overlap. The client therefore recognizedrequired for manual testing. The regular periodic
the need to increase the efficiency of testingrun of automated test suite helped in discovering
through automated testing that is executed on athe defects early in the software development
continuous basis while the new release is underprocess. In addition, it also helped in keeping the
development. To keep efforts focused on theirautomated test suites upto- date with the new
core competency, the client sought a partner tofunctionality of the product.