The Challenge
The State of Indiana’s Government Management Information Systems (GMIS) team, within the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT), wanted to build a comprehensive testing automation solution for its PeopleSoft Finance and HCM system, selecting the PeopleSoft Test Framework as its core toolset. The State had already begun this work with a previous vendor; of the roughly 2,000 test scenarios in scope across Finance and HCM business processes, 544 still needed scripts written. The State needed a team that could design, build, test, and deploy a fully automated solution for the remaining scenarios, complete initial and end-user testing across all 2,000 scenarios, resolve any issues surfaced during that testing, and manage the project against schedule and budget, all while training its own GMIS team on best practices for building, maintaining, and running a structured testing program.
The Solution
WorkStream automated 68 percent of the State’s PeopleSoft test scripts using the PeopleSoft Test Framework. That automation reduced the overall duration of PeopleSoft PUM and PeopleTools upgrade projects by 30 percent. User acceptance testing, historically the most labor-intensive phase of the upgrade process since it requires business users to manually test the application, saw its duration cut by 57 percent. Automating that testing also let the State schedule its PUM updates far more easily, since work that had traditionally been done manually was now handled by the automated testing engine rather than depending on business users to complete it. The repetitive, consistent nature of that automated testing also meaningfully increased the overall quality of testing activities.
The Results
- 68% of test scripts automated — WorkStream automated 68 percent of the State’s PeopleSoft test scripts using the PeopleSoft Test Framework.
- 30% faster PUM and PeopleTools upgrades — Automated testing cut the overall duration of PeopleSoft PUM and PeopleTools upgrade projects by 30 percent.
- 57% shorter user acceptance testing — The most labor-intensive phase of the upgrade process, user acceptance testing, saw its duration cut by 57 percent.
- Testing quality and scheduling improved — The repetitive, consistent nature of automated testing improved overall testing quality and made it far easier for the State to schedule its PUM updates.
