Unify Consulting is a management consulting firm designed to leap over boundaries to discover what lies beyond. Its model breaks the mold with a bespoke approach to every challenge. The Unify Consulting team is passionate about co-creating solutions to unlock potential and propel your vision.
About the Company
Unify Consulting boasts an impressive 15-year history and a team of approximately 400 skilled consultants. The Quality Engineering (QE) team responsible for test automation is composed of Colin Willis (QA Lead), Hannah Hopkins (QA Engineer), Elkana Munganga (QA Engineer), and Rick Martin (Solutions Director).
One of Unify Consulting’s longest-standing and largest clients has worked with the company for six years. Their partnership is strong, and characterized by trust and mutual respect. The client realized they needed a change in strategy when a configuration change threatened to expose sensitive vendor information before it was caught. To safeguard against future risks, Unify Consulting proposed integrating a test automation solution into their process.
Unify Consulting is a Provar partner and is committed to helping its clients improve DevOps quality, one avenue being through automated testing solutions. Luckily, when their client’s need arose, they knew exactly what solution to offer.
The Challenges of a 100% Manual Testing Strategy for a Scaling Client
Before embracing the power of test automation, Unify Consulting relied solely on manual testing practices for their client. The process involved utilizing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, manually navigating various environments, and meticulously conducting tests. Though there was a place for manual testing on a smaller level, their 100% manual testing approach was time-intensive, limiting their test coverage due to its sheer impracticality on a larger scale.
With this client catering to around 900+ Salesforce users and thousands of external vendors, as well as having distinct staging and production environments for their developers, the complexity of testing was undeniable. The diverse user base, coupled with rapid deployments occurring up to four times a month, necessitated a robust solution capable of adapting to this dynamic landscape.
Additionally, as these users were coming in from different browsers (such as web and mobile) and different platforms (like Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), any tests needed to be replicated across all environments. Without a solution with strong reusable test capabilities, this process can be tedious and challenging.
Unify Consulting knew that the test automation solution they implemented had to be comprehensive, quick, and able to keep up with an ever-evolving platform. They also knew that Provar Automation was up to the challenge.
The Move to Provar Automation
Unify Consulting discovered Provar Automation after witnessing another client’s success using the test automation platform. They recommended that their client bring the solution on board to address some of their own challenges. After a meticulously conducted Proof of Concept over several months, which Colin helped assess, the benefits seemed apparent, but it wasn’t until the arrival of Hannah and Elkana to the team a month later that the project’s momentum accelerated significantly. The full Provar Automation implementation was achieved by January 2023, three months after it began.
A pivotal step in this transition was a week-long partner enablement training at Provar’s office in Nashville, TN. This immersive training equipped the Unify Consulting team with the requisite skills to seamlessly integrate Provar Automation into their client’s testing workflow. The University of Provar‘s free offerings, including certifications and courses like Provar Essentials and Provar Automation: Best Practices, further augmented their expertise.
“The week-long training was a great start, and the University of Provar courses really added on to that so we could succeed as we implemented Provar Automation.”
– Colin Willis, QA Lead, Unify Consulting
Using Provar Automation to Gain Reusability, Speed, Reliability, and Accuracy
Though Unify Consulting is still utilizing manual testing in some parts of their client’s business needs, it is only in the areas where manual testing makes sense for their developers to test quickly so they can move it into their regression suite. They have automated over half of their original tests, and Provar Automation gives them the best of both worlds as it enables their manual and automated testing processes to work together seamlessly.
“Our test coverage during our releases increased from 20% to 70% after we implemented Provar Automation. This was incredible and helped us ensure we were covering all areas.”
– Colin Willis, QA Lead, Unify Consulting
The team learned the best way to group relevant test cases after a University of Provar course, which proved to be a big time-saver.
“After we grouped together relevant tests according to the best practice we learned from University of Provar, we actually ended up with a smaller amount of automated tests that cover a larger amount of the business than our manual tests ever did. The reusability of Provar Automation’s tests is incredibly helpful.”
– Colin Willis, QA Lead, Unify Consulting
Operating across three profiles and four distinct environments, Provar Automation proved instrumental in swiftly and effectively conducting tests. The reduction in the number of tests needed was a notable efficiency gain here. Overall, their tests became 9 times faster to execute – no easy feat in such a complex, robust situation.
Faster deployment, even amidst expanding functionality and a growing regression suite, became a reality for the Unify Consulting team thanks to Provar Automation. With its user-friendly interface and low-code approach, the test automation solution surpassed their manual testing processes in terms of ease of use and efficiency.
“Provar Automation is much easier to use versus having to go through test steps manually with a spreadsheet. It’s much less of a headache! It is so user friendly, and I love that it is low-code, which makes using it much faster and more intuitive, especially if someone already came from a coding background.”
– Hannah Hopkins, QA Engineer, Unify Consulting
Provar Automation‘s intuitive interface caters to users at every skill level, facilitating accessibility at every entry point. It also empowers Unify Consulting to generate comprehensive analytics, including insights gleaned from their remaining manual tests, resulting in enriched test case data.
Elkana summed up the benefits of Provar Automation across the board with one use case.
“We were running into issues with testing certain fields when we were only using manual testing processes. You just couldn’t test them effectively. Once we started using Provar Automation, we were able to identify errors much faster and more accurately, and now the errors we see are minimal. I love that our automated tests are so much more repeatable than they were before. Our entire testing process is now more reliable and accurate.”
– Elkana Munganga, QA Engineer, Unify Consulting
Looking Toward the Future
The future holds exciting prospects as Unify Consulting hopes to explore further integrations with Provar Automation to further the successes they have already experienced. Provar Automation’s adaptability and robust support system will no doubt help them in this process.
Unify Consulting also hopes to use Provar Automation with more of their clients after seeing its many benefits, cementing its position as a forward-looking and innovative partner in the realm of test automation.
A job well done to this small team, which has made a resounding impact in its endeavors so far. We look forward to seeing what the future brings!
Key Statistics
- 55% reduction in time spent testing with Provar Automation compared to manual testing
- 9x faster execution times
- Increased test coverage from 20% to 70%
To learn more about how Provar’s solutions can meet your team at all stages of the quality journey, or to share your company’s success story, connect with us today.
