Challenge
Biffa is a leading waste management company and is the UK’s number one for business waste. Biffa provides a multitude of services to a range of businesses, including waste collection, specialist disposal and recycling. To further develop its online presence and extend its services to individuals as well as businesses, Biffa wanted to branch out into eCommerce, a change from its current sales strategy which is predominantly phone and field based. Its first step towards this goal was to design a new website where payment for all services offered could be taken online. It was crucial for the website to be highly resilient to any errors as, if present, could lead to misprocessed orders, damaging the brand.
Solution
Automation Consultants provided full functional testing for the website, which consisted of both manual and automated testing. This included:
- Devising a set of test cases directly from business requirements, ensuring full coverage.
- Determining which test scenarios were appropriate to automate using a cost vs. benefit. analysis. This is a key decision in software testing – often automation is used too heavily or too sparsely, with the former resulting in long periods of time with no benefit being seen, and the latter meaning more manual resources are required.
- Automating user journeys using the Selenium framework for web browser automation, implemented with Visual Studio in C#. These tests were then run after every subsequent release, providing a comprehensive regression pack, the analysis of which identified any immediate issues for attention.
- Providing manual scripts for tests that would be inappropriate to automate.
- Used the full suite of Azure DevOps features, including the Test Plans module for test management/execution; Boards module for work management; Pipelines for Automated regression builds in conjunction with Azure Repos for version control, and Dashboards for detailed test reporting.
- Worked with an external developer organisation, using Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence for defect management and requirements tracking respectively.
Benefits
The launch of the new website was a huge success, with minimal technical issues thanks to AC’s extensive pre-go-live testing. Since the launch, hundreds of orders have been made, boosting revenue and demonstrating that a large untapped market existed for online waste services.
AC received fantastic feedback for their performance. The project has been so successful that Biffa have decided to further expand their online offerings, requiring further web development which AC will provide a key role in testing.
