The customer's challenge
The customer's challenge
The company, active in consultancy services in the civil engineering sector in Europe, had old business systems that did not talk to each other, which discouraged collaboration between the company's nearly one thousand departments. When the company's largest business unit, with 7,000 employees, realised that its 20-year-old ERP system was failing, a group decision was made that everyone had to switch to the same system.
System before/after
System before/after
Depending on the country, there were different business systems, Visma PX, Agresso, Oracle, Parm, etc. After the change, all 20,000 employees would use Maconomy. The tests were controlled in ReqTest, which is a very well-suited test tool for extensive testing. Bug reports were managed in ServiceNow.
Solution
Solution
In order to ensure a harmonised operational model for setting up a common business system, the management team with all business area managers was involved in determining the common model. This was an important step as everyone had to leave local systems for which they had decided all the processes and rules themselves. The project team was then staffed with employees from almost every country. To ensure the quality of the solution, we were hired to run the test management for all country-specific implementations. A key to the success of this was to be very close to the business so that all necessary parties were properly involved and no processes were left out.
Result
Result
Our test manager was given a lot of responsibility in setting the test strategy for a complex application landscape, ensuring the participation of all functions in the tests, and delivering decision support to the steering committee for the decision to proceed. All production deployments during our test manager's time with the client have passed without any surprises.
Conclusions
Conclusions
Setting a test strategy that builds trust with everyone involved is the key to success. As a test manager, having and demonstrating a deep understanding of the test participants' most critical processes and being able to determine when something critical doesn't seem to be working created a great deal of trust between the test manager and the organisation.
We carry out at least 20 different assignments in parallel, which means that our experience bank is developing at a rapid pace. To give you inspiration for projects that can be similar to your current challenges, we share here what we have learnt from others that will benefit you in a future assignment.
What we have done
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