End-to-end testing to create robust online education experiences
Case Study
About Our Client
Overview
Our high-profile client provides a mix of online and offline education resources. Like many education providers, they are improving the online experience for users. They aimed to have all their syllabuses digitalised by 2027 and continue to enhance website functionality for the digital curriculum.
The Challenge – avoid disruptions with expert end-to-end testing
Changes to our clients learning curriculum framework, resulted in the creation of a new syllabus structure. These syllabuses are fundamental to ensuring teachers, parents and students can drive improvements for student achievements. This curriculum is in accordance with the NSW Education Act, and therefore has oversight from the education minister.
As our education client transitioned from paper-based to a digitised experience, they implemented a new CMS platform, but changes occurring in the back end, were not working as per their expectation in the front-end web function. Compounding this, they lacked an inhouse testing team. For this syllabus digitisation, they needed experts to conduct end-to-end testing to avoid disruptions, unhappy stakeholders, and media scrutiny. In 2022, they enlisted a small Avocado project team, to undertake end-to-end testing services, and project governance.
Avocado provided end-to-end testing services including:
- Test leadership
- Quality Assurance and governance
- project delivery
- Functional Testing
- End-to-end testing of the outputs from the backend; API management layer (middleware) and the front-end website.
- System Integration Testing
- User Acceptance Testing
- Defect management and retesting
- Accessibility testing
- Regression testing
- Smoke testing
Sector
Education
”"Striving for online education access and excellent user experience, our client relies on Avocado as their delivery partner - paving the way for a seamless learning journey through automation, rigorous testing, and innovative feature expansion."
The Approach: end-to-end testing
To ensure a smooth transition, Avocado was responsible for developing the test cases and repository, along with creating application scenarios for both the back end and editorial teams. Additionally, Avocado supported the Quality Assurance activities, which involved defect resolution, system enhancements for business as usual (BAU), quarterly releases, and content updates.
Throughout the project, Avocado performed role-based testing during more than 12 releases, ensuring end-to-end process validation. They also conducted targeted and risk-based testing to verify that the functionality aligned with expected outcomes and acceptance criteria. For each sprint, Avocado executed pre-regression and post-regression testing after code deployment.
Notably, Avocado’s testing efforts aimed to ensure not only the proper functioning of newly added syllabuses but also the existing ones. This involved exploratory and negative testing to thoroughly evaluate the system’s performance.
The project was a collaborative effort involving various stakeholders within the team. Avocado interacted with all stakeholders, including Business Analysts, development partners, and the client’s editorial team, working in an Agile-type environment. They also provided updates to the Minister.
Avocado uplifted inhouse capabilities to ensure testing IP remained with the client. Initially, Avocado recorded and reported findings using Microsoft Office Suite for test case execution but later introduced Jira to provide concrete evidence of their testing efforts. They established testing practices inhouse to ensure a smooth flow of the project and conducted daily stand-ups and defect meetings with vendors. Retrospective meetings were held to continuously improve future activities.
The Outcome
With our education client now certain in their goal to have all syllabuses available online, supported by a high-quality website, the Minister can announce the deployment of the new platform and syllabus availability with confidence. They are now turning their sights to continuous platform development and creating more features for their users.
Our client has now engaged Avocado as a long-term delivery partner. They are working with Avocado to implement automation to undertake their regression testing and reduce manual effort. They have also engaged the team to assist with building more features and creating new functionality.
