Quality assurance enhances financial services

In the financial area, security and credibility are indispensable aspects associated with the services provided, including the applications developed to facilitate the end customer’s journey. With the aim of improving the internal development process, a traditional Brazilian bank hired act digital to implement a quality assurance system and qualify the execution of tests in three spheres (automation tests, manual tests, and API tests).

The project involved the creation of a quality core and the implementation of proof-of-concept (POC) and shift-left testing systems for structuring testing mechanisms and quality management. This format was tailor-made for the company based on the agile framework and on the act digital squads. From the implementation, the internal development process became more agile and effective, with continuous integrations, deliveries, and implementations.

Credible financial services: priority in the banking segment

act digital was hired by a Brazilian bank with a strong presence in the corporate segment to implement the quality assurance process in the development of financial services. The banking institution is a publicly-traded company that also includes investment solutions for corporate (PJ) and individual (PF) clients.

With more than 30 years of history, the bank preserves the solidity and credibility in its relationship with its clients. For this reason, the company continually invests in improving processes, technological development, strengthening risk control systems, and improving operating systems. Ensuring business security is the bank’s priority.

Challenge One of the challenges of the bank’s development area was to mitigate the impact of the problems faced due to the number of bugs (errors or failures) in the production environment. In addition to jeopardizing the delivery of applications, this situation caused other difficulties, such as excessive rework, financial losses and damage to the reliability of the services provided.

Another challenge that needed to be overcome was the absence of a quality core in the internal development process. The bank needed professionals to standardize the test flow inside and outside the development squads.

Solution The difficulties faced by act digital’s client highlighted the need for an evaluation and an action plan for the qualification of the quality assurance process. The solution presented was focused on these points.

At first, the team of experts from act digital carried out an assessment of the framework then used by the bank. Based on this diagnosis, a quality nucleus was created which, through POCs, structured the sprint process using types and testing techniques that adhere to the financial niche in which the client operates and also based on the shift-left testing methodology.

In order to guarantee a quality CI/CD process, act digital implemented the robot framework on the client to guarantee the performance of regressive and continuous validations. As a result, the test execution time was reduced by approximately 97%, thus allowing the rapid identification of defects in all stages of the process and ensuring credibility in the use of the platform and in the provision of information for a timely decision-making.

Project Goals The project had the following goals:

• To mitigate the impact of bugs and crashes
• To structure the quality nucleus in the development process
• To promote continuous integrations, deliveries, and implementations
• To raise the credibility of the financial services provided
• To streamline processes, decision-making, and improvements

Developed Solution

act digital structured and implemented the Quality Assurance area with the objective of establishing testing processes in the company in three spheres:

• Automation Testing
• Manual Tests
• API Tests

On all three fronts, act digital has established processes based on continuous improvement to ensure the improvement of tests over time.

Automation Tests Structured from the following processes:

• Definition of automation features
• Planning
• End-to-end functionality automation (E2E)
• Improvement
• Ongoing maintenance

Manual Tests

• They include five processes:
• US refinement and test plan creation
• Execution of test cases
• Bug management
• Impact assessment with regression tests
• Release of demand for homologation

API Tests They comprise the following processes:

• Identification of the APIs involved in the backlog
• Contract validation and preparation of collections
• Test execution
• Release of demand for homologation
• Evaluation for automation of APIs

Implementation Process

The project was implemented sequentially over five months.

Step 1

• Definition of the scope of work

Step 2

• Conception of the work framework focused on the automation process
• Creation of the initial backlog containing the features
• Beginning of technical executions

Step 3

• Presentation of the manual functional testing process
• QA person’s pilot process in squads

Step 4

• Expansion of QA person performance in other squads

Step 5

• Expansion of the QA person’s performance in the bank’s other IT fronts

Results: guaranteed continuous improvement

By structuring the quality assurance service, the bank ensures the process of continuous improvement in the execution of automation, manual, and API tests. In addition, it has the support of an allocated test analyst (QA). Check the results obtained from the implementation.

Results

Test Automation

• Cost reduction in the medium and long term due to test optimization
• Increased productivity due to quick execution feedbacks
• Improvement of E2E functional tests
• Execution time reduced by an average of 97%
• 218 automated scenarios

Manual Tests

• Defect prevention
• Identification of defects at all stages of the process
• Reliability gains for demand releases
• Generation of metrics for decision making
• 287 identified bugs

API Tests

• Defect prevention
• Response time
• Continuous validation of contracts
• Performance validation
• Integration of pipelines
• Root cause identification
• Broad test coverage
• Cost reduction

How we can help your company

act digital develops customized solutions suited to the needs of each client. But we do it based on our own way: the act digital framework, an exclusive structure designed to offer more agility and efficiency in the project execution process, end-to-end.

Based on the act digital framework, we frame our clients’ challenges and outline more assertive execution strategies to align expectations and projections of expected results.

All processes are conducted by act digital squads, which bring together a diverse and balanced set of talents from the digital universe. Our teams are made up of developers, architects, designers, and strategy specialists, who work guided by our exclusive agile framework, creating solutions that guarantee success and results for our clients. This guarantees us flexibility and agility to quickly allocate our team, as needed, a differential that only act digital can offer.