Background
As part of an IT Modernisation programme, A global bank had a requirement to conduct a review of Test Environment Management in order to identify areas of improvement. The global bank did not have a central Test Environment Management function to co-ordinate this activity and therefore asked Wavestone to conduct this review.
What did Wavestone deliver?
Wavestone was asked to conduct a review of the Global Bank’s Test Environment Management. The purpose of the review was to assess the effectiveness of the provisioning and management of Test Environments.
Wavestone’s approach was to perform interviews with key stakeholders on the programme associated with the scope. The review considered 5 key areas of environment management:
- Environment Planning
- Environment Provisioning
- Release Management
- Data Management
- Batch Management
Results
The key recommendations from the review were as follows:
- Environment Management: Create a central team to improve planning, co-ordination and control in order to optimise availability of test environments and ensure good communication across all workstreams
- Environment Provisioning: Provide project management expertise to help manage demand and to free up technical resource
- Release Management: Implement a release management process to manage deployment of change into the environment
- Data Management: Create a data management function to provide end to end oversight for test data from workstream requirements to the delivery of data in the test environment
- Batch Management: Create a batch management function to act as a facilitator for requirements from the workstreams and provide a collated view of the batch issues
Key Success Factors
The recommendations presented to the client led to the creation of a central Test Environment Management team provided by Wavestone. We put this new function in place and provided the central Test Environment Management team. Wavestone stabilised and improved the situation, which led to great efficiencies and more effective test execution to support the programme’s milestones. Following set-up and run, Wavestone successfully transitioned the function and knowledge to the client’s internal team.
