End-to-End QA Automation for Business Critical Apps for a large US based Insurance Carrier

SLK owned the end-to-end implementation of automation from advisory to execution, delivering continuous testing that enabled increased test and automation coverage, reduced test cycle time, and assured superior quality.

Case Summary

An American Insurance Company, the 7th largest insurance carrier in the United States headquartered out of Chicago, It looked to fully automate quality testing for all their business-critical applications within a one year timeframe. SLK worked closely with their internal executive team and delivered a holistic QA automation strategy, starting with advisory on automation & toolchain.

The Challenge

The insurance carrier had deployed a test automation strategy that proved inadequate. With a traditional approach to automation, the initiative had succeeded in achieving only 10-15% automation coverage over several years and was limited to web applications & web services, thereby delivering little or no value to the business.

In search of a radically different approach to solving the challenge, the insurance carrier approached SLK with a mandate to automate all their business-critical applications within one year. They looked to implement a robust QA automation strategy that would leverage the right tools to enable them to move to continuous testing and significantly reduce the time spent on regression testing, allowing in-sprint automation and power-on-demand releases.

The Solution

SLK implemented a comprehensive QA automation strategy in a phased approach.

App Documentation:

All business flows were captured & documented

Test Case Optimization:

Using Lean & six-sigma principles Functional Coverage:

100% functionality coverage (End-to-end — Not just regression)

Rapid Automation:

Over 90% automation of test cases across the heterogeneous app landscape

The Insurance carrier achieved its goal of test automation of all business-critical applications within the planned one year timeframe. The QA team successfully implemented in-sprint automation and enabled DevOps with continuous testing. AVO test automation suite consisting of AVO Discover and AVO Assure was also leveraged.

Business Impact

Reduced test cycle time by

85% – 90%

Reduction in defect slippage by

12-1%

(near 100% test assurance)