AJ Bell – De-risking the implementation of software
De-risking the implementation of software
Formed in 1995, AJ Bell offers one of the biggest investment platforms in the UK and is one of the fastest growing businesses in its sector.
They provide their customers and advisers with a blend of control, investment choice, low-cost delivery and online functionality, offering a suite of products that are suitable for everyone, from independent investors, financial advisers and wealth management companies. As one of the UK’s largest investment platforms, they have over 241,000 customers and £54.7 billion of assets under administration.
Objective
DeeperThanBlue Unify began working with AJ Bell during a transitional period for the company, whereby they needed to scale their engineering capabilities whilst still maintaining their clear quality first approach. As the business was evolving a number of new staff members had joined the team. All team members, both new and existing, needed to be up-skilled with the same unified approach to software testing.
Image source: Ardfern, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Process
Working alongside AJ Bell, DTB Unify implemented our specialist approach to software testing.
The first stage was to run a software testing maturity assessment to benchmark current processes and testing against world class industry standards. From this we put in place a roadmap of activity to revamp the business’ approach to software testing.
Custom training modules were used to upskill existing and new staff members, whilst tailored software testing solutions were implemented that included revamping existing process to ensure that issues and bugs were captured much earlier in the testing lifecycle.
Specifically, our test early test often approach to defect prevention was integrated into the business, ensuring AJ Bell move towards working in a continuous testing environment.
Specialist DTB Unify staff were onsite throughout the process to ensure the ongoing implementation of world class software testing.
Outcome
AJ Bell continues to deliver a consistent platform for their users that is aligned with their brand identity and values.
The implementation of a defect prevention test early test often approach ensures that any issues are remedied before any platform updates go live promoting customer satisfaction, business profitability and enhanced platform agility.
“Our DevOps function has seen a lot of change in the way we release code to production this year, in a positive way. This is all because of DeeperThanBlue’s extensive involvement. We now have a clear test strategy framework and a strong focus on being risk averse, rather than producing more test scripts resulting in more overhead. We needed to work smarter not harder. We now have testing automation in our Development and Test environments and pipelines, which has a huge impact as DevOps can be proactive rather than reactive when dealing with issues. This helps in ensuring no delays and a smooth transition of code to production. Testing is the final gate to production, so it is important to get things right and catch issues before they occur. DeeperThanBlue are now championing the implementation of TDD to ensure we are delivering quality to production, earlier.”
Steven Poulter, Build Test & Release Manager, AJ Bell
“The remit for DTB Unify was very broad, but equally clear and fundamental to the shaping, scaling and enabling of the quality approach within AJ Bell.
Jamie integrated within his peer line and the wider squads to ensure regular updates and communications at the daily scrums. Clear, transparent communication and immediate feedback across both testers and wider organisation was key to this approach working. I would happily use DTB again in a heartbeat.”
Neil Graham, Head of Engineering, AJ Bell
“With the experience that DeeperThanBlue have, they bring a different perspective to the table. They challenge the norm in a constructive way, by building on the good work that the QA team already do and bringing in new ideas, vision and technology. The QA team have taken to this approach with great enthusiasm and several members of the team have taken their careers to the next level thanks to DeeperThanBlue’s guidance.”
Chris Everett, Principal Developer, AJ Bell
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