Global software company Inspired Testing has helped The Scouts Association oversee the successful development of a major upgrade to its membership management system, despite the challenges of working remotely due to the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent national lockdown.
The Scouts Association actively engages and supports young people in their personal development, empowering them to make a positive contribution to society with life-based learning across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The Scouts Association’s membership system, which is relied upon for Scouting across the nations, is a business critical system and therefore crucial to maintain, manage and keep robust.
The Scouts Associations Senior Project Manager, Tom Mortimer-Hart, says the group was faced with a hard deadline as its existing software version was end-of-life and out of support.
“We required the swift appointment of a company and resource to aid in the commencement of the project, to ensure we could manage upgrades and support our members without disruption,” says Mortimer-Hart.
“Any interruption in service or compromise in functionality would be severe to the organisation and its members,” he says. “To be able to execute an upgrade programme and have the confidence in the testing of the robustness once it was delivered was hugely critical to us.”
With internal staff committed to other projects The Scouts Association were keen to find a dedicated resource to undertake the functional testing of the development of the new system. A robust and exhaustive review using more than 500+ tests scripts and scenarios across the platform were applied to ensure the complex and interdependent platform’s processes were working as effectively.
“The system has grown exponentially as a combination of an 'out of the box' and custom coded solution,” says Mortimer-Hart.
“Working closely with the Edinburgh, Delivery Centre, the Inspired Testing team highlighted many instances within the system where things could be improved. In a few instances Inspired Testing's findings allowed us to develop better and faster while the code were tested more robustly.”
“From initial discussions and establishing the project approach, kick-off was actioned within a month, just as the country went into lockdown due to the virus outbreak,” says Lloyd Dignan, Director, Inspired Testing. "Our teams worked remotely and collaborated online with Scouts and the development teams. 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 any blockages and chart the project trajectory.”
Mortimer-Hart says Inspired Testing met and exceeded expectations of what was needed to be achieved and commissioned to do so.
“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,” he says.
“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 in other aspects of the project. This exceeded expectations of the business and as to when the project could go live.”
