"Xray and Jira are the key factors of our agile transformation. This is the first time the agile transformation is not only driven bottom up but it’s also driven top-down. You absolutely need the support from top down, otherwise it takes a long time."
Head of Testing, Banking Institution
About the Bank
This traditional financial institution is a high-performance, full-service bank with more than 5,000 employees and the biggest in this Central European country. They operate internationally in order to meet their clients' cross-border requirements.
The Challenge
The bank has been a leader in the financial industry for over 150 years. In order to maintain their competitive edge in the industry, they began an agile transformation to modernize their processes and tools. To help with this agile transformation, they called an organizational change consultant to set up a new test service department and transform the way testing and quality was done.
Prior to Xray, the bank used HP Quality Center and testers and developers worked in siloed operations. The business analysts and developers didn’t want anything to do with test cases because it wasn’t their tool. They weren’t contributing to quality, and testers were also not helping write requirements. Testers were completely separated from the software development process, because their tool was different from that of the developers’.
The high licensing costs and lack of innovation from HP Quality Center, didn't sit well with stakeholders. They saw Jira gaining momentum in the banking industry as a tool to manage the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), including testing, and that’s exactly what they needed - all of their teams working together.
“Quality of testing is a part of the whole SDLC, and not just at the end, and my role as department lead and coach, is setting up all of the services. I knew we had to do this migration as soon as possible to get rid of Quality Center and start changing the mindset of people.”
Head of Testing, Banking Institution
The Solution
Since the bank is traditionally a hierarchical organization, they had to make a good case to stakeholders to make this tool migration. To start, they wrote a document comparing several systems including Micro Focus, Zephyr and Xray.
They also proposed an Xray pilot to all of the test/QA managers. Everybody agreed to participate in the pilot and they set up the migration process. Before even starting the migration, they gave teams the option to try Xray on their own and see what they thought.
After 4 months, 70% of the teams migrated to Xray by themselves.
“I decided to open Xray to everybody through a sandbox environment, so that they can try Xray themselves. Because of that, a lot of teams started using Xray immediately. They didn’t want to wait for the official migration.”
Head of Testing, Banking Institution
The results were astounding, and it was clear that the teams were ready for a new tool and wanted Xray.
The Migration
After the team proved a successful pilot, they set up the project and got the budget. The migration happened in 4 stages. The educational phase with Jira and Xray training (for teams that hadn’t already migrated by themselves), the selection of the test data to migrate from Quality Center to Xray, and finally the data migration itself.
They used Xray’s custom migration tool to migrate test cases from Quality Center, and they migrated over 50 projects.
“Because I knew Xray would be a success story, it was easy to migrate to a new tool. Teams were willing to migrate by themselves, and that gave us success stories to share with others. 80% of Xray is Jira knowledge. We showed our team how Jira works and the mindset behind it, and the rest was easy.”
Head of Testing, Banking Institution
The bank also needed some extra support during their agile transformation and Xray connected them with a certified Xray Partner called SwarmIT. SwarmIT is also an Atlassian Partner and they are experts in agile software development, focused on Atlassian tools and techniques.
The partner worked as an intermediary between Xray support and the bank, helping with any technical questions around integration and configuration, migration of existing test assets, integration of test automation and DevOps pipeline, training and education. Their expertise in agile test methodologies, helped the bank assess processes, and further strengthen their agile mindset.
The Results
Across the board, the bank re-organized the entire IT department. Now they don’t have department leads but self-organized teams. They use a SAFe approach, and are moving towards faster release cycles.
The bank experienced these 5 benefits from migrating to Xray:
1. Strengthened team collaboration
With an agile mindset and the right tool, team members now collaborate much easier. Business analysts, developers and testers, can see the progress of requirements and testing, and have full visibility into their work. They also have a common language to talk with each other, using the same terminology and concepts, because Xray uses Jira native issue types.
Now that they have the test cases in the same application, the connection with the requirements is there. If something is wrong, anyone on the team can see it and act on it. Because of Xray, testers and requirements engineers can see the progress of test execution and requirements status directly on the enhanced Jira agile boards, giving them full blown visibility into their testing progress.
2. Focused on quality throughout the entire SDLC
Before Xray, Quality Center was the tool of the tester. Developers didn’t care about test cases because it wasn’t “their tool.” Now that they’re using Xray and doing sprint planning, teams integrate quality from the start. Testers are involved in the SDLC from the very start.
Development teams take on a shift-left testing approach, and incorporate testing much earlier in the software development lifecycle, which helps them deliver unparalleled quality. This change in mindset is all due to the tight integration with Xray and Jira, because now teams work under the same toolset.
3. Cost cuts and savings on licensing
Previous to Xray, they had 150 concurrent licenses for Quality Center, an unimaginable cost for a tool that wasn’t even integrated into their SDLC toolset and was holding them back. Since they adopted an unlimited user Xray Server license, they’re paying 10x less on licensing per year.
With these monumental savings, they invest that money back into their projects and ecosystem. With their teams performing faster, better and more collaboratively, they gain speed and velocity in their releases and provide tremendous value to their customers, keeping their competitive edge in the banking industry.
4. Work visibility and easy reporting using Xray native reports and gadgets
Reporting is much easier in Xray than Quality Center. QA Managers use Xray’s reporting and gadgets to gauge their progress and gain insights into their testing performance. During their first agile release training, they set up reporting because reporting is a valuable aspect of test management. With Xray’s native reports, they’re able to track coverage status, requirements traceability, and many other valuable testing metrics.
5. Easy knowledge sharing through internal Xray expert group
Another major success factor in their migration was their Xray expert group. The company had Xray superusers who had a lot of Xray knowledge from using the tool.
This group of internal Xray experts received additional training and in turn, these super-users now support other projects with migration and training. This was support from bottom up and top down.
The Future
Adopting Xray has been a turning point in this bank's agile transformation. With an agile mindset, and the right tools to support it, they work faster, and deliver even more quality releases.
With Xray’s tight integration with Jira, everyone on the software development life cycle focuses on testing and quality, from start to finish. They take full advantage of Xray’s out-of-box reporting capabilities to extract even more value from their testing efforts.
With an unlimited user Xray license, they save 90% of yearly licensing costs compared to their previous solution. With these savings, they invest in their future and focus on providing outstanding value to their customers. With Xray helping them gain speed and velocity in their releases, they unleashed their competitive edge in the banking industry.
Want to know more about agile testing with Jira and Xray?
Check out these resources:
- Agile Testing: How to break silos and build quality in from the start
- 5 ways Xray improves your agile testing in Jira
- Video: Intro to Xray: Enable agile testing with Xray - Test Management
Or download our eBook: Unlocking Agile Testing
