Client Overview

The Scout Association actively engages and supports young people in their personal development, empowering them to make a positive contribution to society. In partnership with adults, young people take part in fun indoor and outdoor activities. They learn by doing, by sharing in spiritual reflection and by taking responsibility. The Scout Association delivers life-based learning across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

“The team greatly exceeded in the delivery of quality testing to ensure a robust platform. The Inspired Testing team was commended by the Chief Executive of Scouts during the launch of the project and it has been recognised as a huge win for the organisation.”
Tom Mortimer-Hart, Senior Project Manager, The Scout Association

Problem statement

Scouts were faced with a hard deadline as their existing software was EOL (end-of-life) and out of support. They required the swift appointment of a company and resource to aid in the commencement of the project. Internal staff committed to other projects, so it was not possible for Scouts to be a commissioned and dedicated resource to the testing of the development. With a robust and exhaustive review (with more than 500 tests scripts and scenarios across the platform) the actual software itself, being very compartmentalised with many isolated parts, created lots of dependencies. A dedicated resource to focus and concentrate on the project was critical to ensure Scouts could manage upgrades and support their members. They had to appoint an external business partner which was critical to the project’s success. Scouts are heavily reliant on the platform. Any drop-in uptime or compromise in functionality would be severe to the organisation and its members. To be able to execute a programme, upgrade it and have the confidence in the testing of the robustness once it was delivered was hugely critical to Scouts.

“The team greatly exceeded in the delivery of quality testing to ensure a robust platform. The Inspired Testing team was commended by the Chief Executive of Scouts during the launch of the project and it has been recognised as a huge win for the organisation.”
Tom Mortimer-Hart, Senior Project Manager, Scouts

Solution

From initial discussions and establishing the project approach, kick-off was actioned within a month. On commencing with the project and beginning of lockdown, teams worked remotely. A light agile approach with daily scrum check-ins and a burndown chart helped understand exactly how much time was remaining on the projects and how many tickets were outstanding. This helped identify blockage and trajectory on the project. Engaging with the developers both internally and offshore to help execute new functionality, meant all teams had to work collaboratively with the experts.

The system has grown exponentially being a combination of an ‘out of the box’ and custom coded solution. Working with the Inspired Testing team has highlighted many instances within the system where things could be improved especially around the communication of information which was associated with the product. In a few instances Scouts was able to develop better and faster while Inspired Testing could test the code more robustly.

After improvement

“Inspired Testing has met and exceeded our expectations of what we wanted to achieve and commissioned them to do.” The team’s approach was scalable and flexible. Being diligent, pragmatic consultants and experts in their field, they added great value on many instances where we could rationalise the scripts in the testing phase of the project as well as identify opportunities where things could be made better for the future. It wasn’t previously done before which meant the team was able to go through the volume of scripts a lot quicker and could also make up time that was lost within other aspects of the project. This exceeded expectation of the business and as to when the project could go live.

“The team’s calm, measured and pragmatic engagement on the project while getting up to speed really stood out. Nothing was too hard or difficult. The Inspired Testing team was always willing to find a solution and overcome difficulties which was really, really refreshing. We were one team rather than working with the Inspired Testing team.”

Benefit to the client after implementation

The current project was a once-off since there isn’t another upgrade planned within the life time of the product. However, we’ve had an outstanding experience with Inspired Testing and will recommend and definitely work again with them on any projects that require testing in the future.