Retail & Financial Services Company Accelerates Test Execution Time
by 97%

A large, publicly traded retail and financial services company operating across the United States and Latin America.

Following the deployment of a modern data platform to support the modernization of a point-of-sale (POS) system, the client’s eight-person QA team faced significant challenges with testing. Their processes were largely manual, requiring 14-15 business days to execute the test suite for each release. This severely impacted the release cadence and negatively affected the customer experience.

Further challenges included:

• A legacy POS system developed over 25 years by various teams, resulting in disorganized code and non-standardized HTML implementations.
• Complex business dependencies related to store opening hours and cash management by logged-in employees, requiring a sophisticated automation solution beyond a simple framework.

Ensono began by analyzing the client’s manual test suite, prioritizing test cases for automation, and identifying unique business and technical requirements, including tool selection, scalable tests, and parallel test execution.

Our primary objectives were to create readable, easily understandable tests that served as living documentation, and to enable the client’s team to easily scale the automated tests with minimal code setup. This was achieved through common data-driven test steps and custom solutions for unique pages. Leveraging the BDD (Behavior-Driven Development) library eliminated the need for extensive upfront documentation.

To handle the parallel execution of multiple tests, a smart state management system was developed. This system tracked and synchronized resources (stores and employees), eliminating redundant setup steps and preventing conflicts between tests attempting state-altering actions on shared resources. Tests requiring isolation were executed sequentially to prevent interference.

The POS system’s support for multiple languages and time zones across North and Latin America presented additional complexity. This was addressed by emulating the time zone of the store being tested, enabling parallel test execution from a single build agent.

Ultimately, we developed a new test automation framework for 534 manual test cases, integrating these tests—with auto-generated release notes and test reports—into the release pipeline. We also delivered documentation of system requirements and architectural decision records (ADRs) for tooling, approaches, and release pipelines, along with a dashboard to track manual and automated test case status and overall pipeline health.

Throughout the project, we collaborated closely with the client’s QA team, conducting workshops at the project’s conclusion to ensure knowledge transfer and ongoing maintenance of the new framework.

• A 96.66% reduction in regression test time (now less than three hours).
• A fully integrated automation suite with release pipelines.
• Automated tests run with every release, generating easy-to-read HTML reports and release notes.
• The client’s QA team gained valuable skills and confidence in testing best practices.

The significant reduction in regression test time has accelerated the entire release cycle, enabling more frequent updates and system improvements. The fully integrated automation suite and release pipelines empower the client to handle larger projects and more complex releases with ease, freeing the team to focus on strategic initiatives. These advancements collectively ensure a more efficient, reliable, and high-quality software development and release process.