Case Study: Launching a ground-breaking Digital Out of Home platform

In this testing case study, we take a look at how we have recently helped one of the UK’s largest DOOH (Digital Out of Home) advertising companies to pioneer and successfully bring to market an innovative contextual advertising platform.

The Challenge

In 2016, we were approached by one of the UK’s leading outdoor advertising companies.  The client was launching a ground-breaking content management system (CMS) for delivering contextual digital out-of-home advertising. The platform would serve dynamic content targeted by conditions such as weather, time and location, ensuring the right creative is displayed at the right time in the right place.

We were approached by the client and asked to provide a test strategy to support the internal product development, subsequent MVP launch, and ongoing support for their pioneering product.

The brief was clear, the client required a fully managed test solution that could react and evolve with the growing needs of the business on a product that has seen huge growth potential realised over a very short space of time.

During these early stages, the client’s product development team was hugely focused on delivering new features fast. Processes were lean, and quality was paramount. Hiring a test manager, test resource and accumulating a test lab would be too disruptive and very risky at such a period of high growth.

Our Solution

Technical scoping, planning and product baselining

The first practical task in working with a new product is to carry out an assessment of current quality levels in the application under test.

The Zoonou team devised a set of manual test cases, user journeys, and test data sets. This documentation formed the backbone of the initial manual scripted test effort.

Before any practical test execution activities were undertaken, Zoonou carried out a review and amends session with the client to approve the plan before use.

After a full round of manual testing, Zoonou provided test results to the client’s team including the number of tests that either passed, failed or were blocked. Manual scripting and test execution activities provide valuable feedback on the status of the system whilst enabling the Zoonou team to become closely acquainted with the application.

Automation framework and scripting

Once the baselining activities had been completed, a Zoonou Automation Test Specialist analysed the test suites and system to determine feasibility to introduce test automation and created an Automation Design Document which describes the solution that Zoonou intends to provide to bring automated efficiency to the ongoing iterative support requirements.

Once the approach had been confirmed with our client, Zoonou built automated test scenarios and test data sets to underpin ongoing regression testing. From this point, the client could begin to realise the efficiency savings and increased test coverage every sprint.

Ongoing agile sprint support

Zoonou continued to provide manual test support sessions for ongoing agile development sprints. Within these sessions, Zoonou provides the required front-end and back-end manual testing of the product, while maintaining and updating scripts for the automation framework in line with new system features.

Working in close partnership with the client, Zoonou devised a bespoke test support approach that provided the client with fully managed iterative test support on a sprint basis, supporting releases in a cost-effective manner.

The automated solution was integrated with the client’s internal communication platform to provide a detailed report to all developers immediately upon completion. Zoonou provided the client’s team with the ability to run the automation suite whenever they want, which they have integrated into their system to run on a regular basis. This adds the ability to continuously test the product for defects.

The Results

The Zoonou test strategy provided the client with a highly efficient fully managed test solution that carefully balanced manual testing of new features with automated scripted testing for regression testing tasks.

Zoonou developed an automation suite that can be executed in full in approximately 5 minutes. These automated tests can be executed by Zoonou during regular testing, or on demand by the client’s development team.

The test cases covered by the automation would previously take 4-6 hours to execute manually. This offered the client considerable savings in both time and costs for manual labour compared to a wholly manual testing approach. Cost savings were quickly realised due to the frequency of update releases.

Zoonou deployed a dedicated team consisting of a Project Lead, occupying the strategic test management role, an Automation Specialist looking after the maintenance of the framework and scripts, and a pair of Manual Test Analysts delivering new feature testing and review of automation scenario failures. The support from the Zoonou team was designated at key points during each sprint which enabled the client to have a fully managed service without the costs associated with a full-time function.

Ultimately, Zoonou provided the client with the confidence to deploy to live with minimal fear of impact on the key user journeys. Detailed reporting on the current state of a sprint is communicated quickly and directly to the development team for action. The combination of manual and automated test techniques allows testers to focus on new features and priority areas, while regression testing of existing functionality is automated at regular intervals greatly reducing test time.

Find out more

If you’d like to find out more about how Zoonou can help you with your agile testing and automation needs, please get in touch at info@zoonou.com, or please see details on our Contact page.

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