CTG’s Testing Talent and Expertise Enables FPS Finance to Deliver Better Quality Applications

The client

The Federal Public Service (FPS) Finance of Belgium deals with the finances of the state and federal government, especially taxes and the state treasury, and employs about 20,000 people. The FPS Finance consists of seven administrations. The ICT-staff department provides support for each administration.

Challenges and objectives

The FPS Finance was looking for a partner that could provide the necessary test resources and test expertise to perform structured test activities and accompany the service delivery domains on their path to greater test maturity, enabling them to deliver applications that provide users with an enhanced digital experience

Our solution

To expand and optimize its software testing capacity across the different service delivery domains, the FPS Finance relies on CTG for the delivery of competent test profiles and the injection of professional know-how in the fields of test methodology, test automation, performance testing, and quality management.

Testing Talent

CTG provides the FPS Finance with a flexible supply of competent testing profiles to strengthen internal teams across nearly all service delivery domains. We deliver five types of profiles: Test Engineers, Test Coordinators, Test Automation Engineers, Performance Test Engineers, and Quality Managers. For each service delivery domain, at least one Quality Manager ensures the quality of the execution across the different projects by following up on releases, ensuring that applicable standards are respected, initiating improvement actions, aligning test activities with the Agile and DevOps work method, and supporting the implemented tools. The Quality Manager also helps screen resources and facilitates the onboarding and introduction of new team members.

Training and Expertise

Our professionals inject specific expertise into internal staff through training courses and ad hoc interventions of specialists in the domains of Agile testing, automation, and performance testing. 

CTG experts have provided various trainings around Cucumber, Selenium, Behavioral Driven Development (BDD), Test Design Techniques, Introduction to DevOps, and more.

Agile Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) and Testing Alignment

The various project teams in most service delivery domains work in an agile mode. To ensure the quality of each sprint release, CTG focused on the integration of the testing activities in an agile team and agile workflow. Not only for setting up and executing the different test activities, but also for the analysis work that precedes testing. CTG applied the shift-left principle and injected testing processes into each phase of the SDLC.

Test Automation and Tools

The IT department consistently choose products that can best help them achieve high-quality results. 

Because of the evolutions in the market and other tools already used internally, the FPS Finance decided that it could better monitor and manage its testing activities by installing integrable tools, such as Atlassian’s Jira, Xray, and Confluence. CTG guided the migration of Micro Focus (MF) Unified Functional Testing, MF Performance Center, and MF Application Lifecycle Management to Selenium, NeoLoad, and Xray, respectively.

For the repetitive execution of tests, our specialists integrated the Cucumber and Selenium tools with the automation framework (TAF) developed by CTG. This framework allows for an easy way to define Gherkin scenarios and be able to reuse these scenarios across domains. Regression testing is also part of the test automation initiatives.

CTG integrated functional testing and automated testing into Xray, and efforts to provide uniform reporting are in progress.

Test Management Setup With Xray

CTG performed the complete setup and migration from MF Quality Center to Xray, as well as user guidance and training.

FPS Finance was looking for a test management solution to replace MF Quality Center. FPS Finance chose Xray since it is fully integrated with Jira and also contains the necessary integrations with Selenium and other test automation tools.

The following tasks were performed by CTG:

• Workshops to outline the processes (workflow, structure, reporting, integration test automation, dashboarding, etc.)

• Setup of the initial configuration in Xray

• Walkthrough of the configured solution

• Migration of the existing data to Xray

• Integration of Selenium/Cucumber and Xray

• Standardization of dashboards and reporting

• Training and coaching of users

With this setup of Xray, all the different testers at FPS Finance now work in the same standardized way and use the same dashboards and reporting.

Performance Testing

Within the Section Performance Testing (SPT) — an umbrella body within the FPS that manages all performance testing initiatives—CTG reinforced the internal team with a number of experts to improve performance testing. Within the SPT, we implemented NeoLoad as a performance testing tool.

During the performance tests on the acceptance environment, CTG specialists deployed the Dynatrace tool to monitor and evaluate the activities and integrated it with NeoLoad.

Results

Through partnership with CTG— specifically our structured approach, talented resources, and expertise—FPS Finance now delivers more reliable and high-quality applications, improving users’ digital experiences. Structured testing activities significantly increased the quality of documentation, user stories, test cases, defect management, communication, and reporting.

These efforts improved traceability significantly, enabling faster detection and correction of errors in the applications. By adopting a “shift-left” approach for testing activities, the quality of the delivered applications to the business has increased, and internal resources have more time available for core activities.

CTG provided quality training and smooth delivery of competent resources at a competitive price in a scarce market. The testing knowledge and profiles are deployable and interchangeable across all service delivery domains. When new people come onboard, we give intensive coaching and mentoring to integrate everyone quickly within the agile teams. Thanks to the various courses and on-the-job training, the testing maturity and the adoption of new technologies at the FPS Finance has increased.