A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending the Capgemini & Sogeti Global Testing Community Meeting in Mumbai, India. It was my first visit to India, and, having taken some time off to travel in 2011, I was looking forward to catching up on how the Testing Global Service Line (GSL) has progressed over the last twelve months.

The three-day event consisted of a site visit to our Mumbai facilities, a series of parallel presentation and workshop streams and our annual Innovation Awards Ceremony (more of that in my colleague Clare Argent’s blog post, which will follow shortly).

There were numerous workshops and presentations I attended over the course of the three days. In this post I’ll be focusing on the sessions I feel are of most relevance to the UK. Some highlights include:

*The tour of the test labs
We started the meeting with a tour of the Capgemini and Sogeti offices in Mumbai. Our Head of Rightshore Testing, Delivery and Operations had organised a packed series of sessions, from the Sogeti Mobile Apps Centre, demos in the Test Lab (OAT, Shunra, etc) to client-specific test factories covering insurance, retail, consumer products and banking clients.

I thought the Shunra test tool was really interesting – a plug in for HP LoadRunner which can be used to simulate testing on the WAN (i.e. from different geographies), based on sets of data (e.g. packet loss) from network backbones to simulate mobile networks. For our telecoms clients this additional functionality – to throttle 2G, 3G and 4G network speeds to look for jitters, choppiness etc. for streaming video – is particularly beneficial.

Automation is constantly at the top of our clients’ minds for functional testing, so three accelerators caught my attention:
1. Our CAFÉ framework, which now supports Selenium using Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Perl;
2. Message Based Testing Accelerator, an alternative to SOAP UI but with many more protocols;
3. SAP Script Express to create detailed manual UAT scripts quickly, based on and recording user actions.

I was truly amazed by the wealth of expertise and talented individuals in Mumbai (and elsewhere in India) as well as the tools and test assets that are available to all of us in Sogeti.

*Industrialisation and partners
Another focus for the meeting was the Testing Industrialisation programme, which already delivers increased operational efficiencies for our clients and greater competitiveness for our testing services, leveraging our One Process model (TMap®, of course) across our various Test Centres of Excellence – whether in India, UK or anywhere else around the world.

This was followed by a series of interactive workshops focusing on key aspects that we need to address, such as base lining our testing content, as well as other solution based breakouts (TaaS, MBT). There were also presentations from our partners (HP, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Micro Focus) each of which helps to underpin this theme of efficiency with their tools.

For the UK, the HP presentation on their Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) product (v11.0) and a presentation by Microsoft on Agile Testing were both insightful. Keep an eye out for more information on both of these and other topics via our subject matter experts, or SMEs, in the future.

I am also pleased to report that our testing service globally continues to do well across the group, with healthy growth targets between now and 2015.

So, in summary, I thoroughly enjoyed my first visit to India and was impressed by the scale, commitment, enthusiasm and professionalism of our offshore testing teams and their hospitality in hosting our visit, and of my fellow participants from countries as far afield as Brazil, Australia and China and everybody I met during my trip.

The challenge for us in the UK is to leverage what we have globally, build (and share) what we need locally, industrialize wherever possible and ensure that our personnel continue to be trained and developed accordingly. There is a global wealth of talent, expertise – and opportunity – at our fingertips.

Software testing is the best possible type of technical investment a company can make – it protects business productivity and reputation while ultimately saving it a lot of money. But can we quantify that Return on Investment (ROI)?

Upfront costs can be hard to swallow for businesses with tight budgets, so they need credible evidence that their instincts are well placed. At Sogeti our instincts and experience tell us that it is always more cost-effective to invest in developing software right the first time, than paying to fix it later.

The cost of fixing software defects in live environments can be huge, depending on the scale of deployments and the interference with customer productivity. Development and Quality Assurance (QA) costs incurred by patching bugs in software that was developed without sufficient testing, will always be higher than any early costs saved. Developers and integrators can also be held liable for lengthy on-going support contracts on buggy software. And software failures attributed to skimping on thorough software testing won’t be missed by the market – poorly tested software can affect future business and reputation as well as existing contracts.

A dedicated software testing specialist with a history of excellence and reliability in every market situation and scale of project, is an invaluable partner to have. Proven, structured methodologies such as TMap. TPI and Agile Development Testing are trusted by many of the world’s most successful and admired businesses for their rigour and proven deliverable results.

No competent software testing professional will ever recommend short-term gains of flimsy testing when the risk of huge medium-to-long-term losses -both financial and in esteem – has such unacceptable odds. In well-defined projects, an expert like Sogeti will happily work with you to fix prices up front and provide a full-blown ROI calculation, providing as accurate a picture of anticipated ROI as possible for your individual circumstances. After all, known quantities are always more affordable than the unknown.

Increasingly I feel that ‘risk’ is becoming one of the most over-used words in the English language. We are advised of the risk before drinking hot coffee or using a hot water tap. Financial advisors want to understand our ‘risk appetite’ before advising on our personal financial planning. And who isn’t now familiar with the Health & Safety ‘risk assessments’ that have become pre-cursors to even the most routine school trips or workplace activities? So many facets of our life are now seemingly governed by checking and double-checking our commit to risk.

Naturally it’s also a word I increasingly encounter in my own world of software testing. I frequently hear about project managers clutching the straw entitled ‘risk-based testing’ – a straw that is often clutched as their project faces missing deadlines.

Do we truly understand what risk is, and what it means in the context of our daily lives? And does the concept translate, unchanged, to the IT software testing world?

One of the benefits of prudent outsourcing of the test function is that this approach provides a transparent view of risk. That’s a bold statement, but allow me to outline the approach taken by the QA function of one well-known retailer I worked with in a previous role. For all of its IT, the test function was outsourced a single independent supplier. The function was set up to system test solution deliveries from multiple providers. The Test Outsourcer contract was constructed with financial penalties for any Priority One or Priority Two incidents occurring in live production operation during a three-month warranty period. Clearly this commercial construct required the test outsourcer to provide test plans, test coverage and test timetables commensurate with providing a sufficient level of quality to reduce the likelihood of attracting financial penalties. In essence the test outsourcer was now carrying the risk – a risk with real financial values attached.

Test projects typically follow a lifecycle that sees delivery teams delivering late but the business end dates remaining fixed. How can the test outsourcer react within such a lifecycle if they now have to take on extra risk, resulting in less time to test to the level of coverage required? The response must be a contractual one: the original agreement to sign up to zero Priority One and Priority Two incidents becomes impossible. The result? Concessions are proposed, allowing for example, a maximum of one Priority One incident and four Priority Two incidents during the warranty period.

So there we have it – a quantifiable assessment of risk that a business can properly assess using no more dark-art skills than accountancy.

Clearly for all but the most trivial IT solution, it is never prudent to test nothing. But nor is it practical to test everything. So the only remaining questions are: how much testing should we do, and what should be left out?  Intuitively the closer we are to the ‘test everything’ end of the spectrum, the less risk we will be taking; and conversely, the closer we are to the ‘test nothing’ end of the spectrum, the more risk we are taking. So the real question is not whether we should use risk-based testing, but how much risk are we prepared to take? Of course quantifying an objective, acceptable level of risk is extremely difficult. After all, how do you judge when the level of risk has gone too far?  This Test Outsourced approach gave the business a rational measurement of risk that enabled an informed and measured decision making process for IT deployments.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are” – e.e. cummings

As I myself have recently learned, at Sogeti in the UK, graduate training, journey begins with six weeks of intensive training. By the end of this rather exhausting but energising period, you’ll be certified in ISEB, have learnt some essential soft skills you didn’t know you needed, been exposed to a working environment (for some a completely new experience!), and have practical experience as well as having studied the theory. These all seem to be crucial stages in the making of a test consultant.

After these six weeks of training, if you are really lucky you will go straight to a client site. If not, and most aren’t, you’ll be in a place (very familiar to many of us) called “the bench”. This means you’re waiting to be put on a client site. From personal experience, I cannot stress enough how important this time is – it’s a valuable opportunity to learn, learn and learn! Research, read books, or complete an online course – in short, I advise any Sogeti graduate to start increasing their skill set and what they have to offer, even before you’re placed on your first client site.

Now for the nerve-wracking part – when you’re actually placed on the client site. I’d like to share some basic ground rules I’ve learnt during my first few client assignments:

1. Prepare yourself mentally: think about your attitude, image and how you come across to the client especially, but also to your Sogeti colleagues.

2. Be yourself: don’t try too hard. You were hired because of the values you can bring to the company and clients, so don’t try to behave in a certain way simply in the hope of impressing others.

3. Give yourself time to fit in: when a new person joins an existing team, team members have already set their roles and patterns of working. Your goal is to work effectively with other people: with some, this will be easy; with others, less so. As long as the service you’re delivering and role you’re carrying out aren’t affected, that’s fine.

4. If you’re nervous, it will pass. When going into a new situation, it’s natural to feel uncomfortable with the new people, environment, politics, community… My advice, just go with the flow. A good team will help you to make this shift, and each challenging situation will become easier. Something that also helps to smooth any transition is support and supervision. If no one offers it, suggest it – it’s important to build a good relationship with your test manager, and asking for help when you need to should only strengthen this relationship’s foundations.

To sum up: be yourself, be calm, listen, be open, be aware of all new experiences and take the time to learn.

In the end, what I’m trying to get across is this: you’re in for a great experience. Aim high and give it your all to get there. That’s everything I can teach you based on my personal experiences as a trainee consultant. Now – go get ‘em!

For more information about Sogeti’s Graduate Programme email us, check out our Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

“The difference between try and triumph is a little umph” ~ Author Unknown.

“You’re only a graduate” — that possibly undermining phrase again. Does it sound familiar? Yet contrary to any assumptions you may make, being a graduate – especially at Sogeti - is no walk in the park. I have been here only a few months but I can, hand on heart, say that, from what I know from my friends who graduated with me, Sogeti treats graduates differently from many other corporate companies.

For starters, graduates are not looked down upon as being at the bottom of the chain. And we’re certainly not given menial coffee-making tasks. From Day One, we are presented with real responsibilities and high expectations.

What has struck me is that it is the people that you work with, and those around you, who are the ones that make the real difference in a job here – rather than just the work tasks themselves. No matter who you are, you’ll always see someone willing to lend a hand, answer your questions or nudge you toward the right direction — and from what I can see they do it because they want to, not because they have to.

Many graduates I know worry that they will remain in the same position far longer than they need to, making little progress. Admittedly, after reading many horror stories, I began to think that view might be true. But this for me has now completely changed. I have only been here a few months but I can genuinely say there seem to be great opportunities for advancing. And what you do here as an individual makes a real difference, not only to other Sogeti employees around you but also the clients you work with, and the difference you make is recognised, appreciated and valued.

I’m not by any means claiming it’s going to be easy to climb up the ladder. As the saying goes, “Anything in life worth having is worth working for’.” At Sogeti I’m getting the message that you need to strive hard to prove you deserve what you want. However, unlike the stereotypical big, faceless corporations where many graduates find themselves lost, Sogeti seems to be different by ensuring that graduates, just like all other employees, are treated as individuals. It’s amazing how everyone gets to know you, takes the time to say hello and knows your name. Your presence and your progress are noticed.

As a graduate, when you first begin at Sogeti UK, you receive an immense amount of support, mentoring and training (in other words, you ‘feel loved’!). You are presented with everything you need to develop into a credible consultant. And although you may eventually become qualified, stepping up from this — in order to be established as a good consultant – YOU are the one who needs to put the hard work and dedication in to get to the next level. You’ll be handed all the resources possible, but if you’re just here to get by, you’re not going to get far. Sogeti expects 100 percent effort and commitment. And now that I am part of the team, so do I!

For more information about Sogeti’s Graduate Programme email us, check out our Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

Yesterday Capgemini, Sogeti and HP launched the second annual Financial Services World Quality Report (FSWQR), delivering a unique snapshot of the maturity levels of testing organisations within financial services (FS) institutions across the globe.

This latest report demonstrates that Quality Assurance (QA) at financial services (FS) firms is a high priority during tough operating conditions, translating into an IT focus on compliance, business growth and cost optimisation. It reveals that the cloud and outsourcing are now key considerations for testing organisations looking to deliver the greatest possible business value.

The findings were largely drawn from deeper analysis of data gathered for the World Quality Report 2011/12 which included responses from 175 banks, insurance companies and capital market firms. But additional research was also conducted on issues specific to the FS sector through a further survey garnering 268 respondents.

These fresh insights arrive at a crucial time for the FS sector. With the initial impact of the global financial and economic crisis abating, FS firms are facing a ‘new normal’, – one in which margins are squeezed, revenues are declining or growing more slowly, the future of certain revenue streams is unclear, and risk management and regulatory demands are more rigorous than ever. While the business imperatives are many and urgent, the testing-specific challenges for QA are also mounting. Customers and other third-parties are more demanding, and technology innovations mean FS firms are finding new ways every day to facilitate communications, interactions, and transactions with and among their retail customers, corporate clients, and other counterparties.

This report was made possible by Capgemini’s Financial Services Global Business Unit (FSGBU) Testing Centre of Excellence teams, which seek to provide sector insights, capture industry best practices, and provide strategies for continuous improvement to our clients. Download your copy of the Financial Services World Quality Report today. We hope you find the report valuable and helpful when defining the direction of your own quality improvement initiatives.

As a software test consultant I spend a lot of time thinking about the processes and business data flows behind transactions. If you tell me that you’ve just booked the holiday of a lifetime and I ask you where and when, I’ll privately be wondering about the business processes behind your purchase. Let’s call it an occupational hazard.

Holidays are at the front of my mind because I’ve been working with a large travel operator on an interesting HR system implementation. If you think there’s a wide array of factors and variables in booking a holiday, well, it’s dwarfed by the variables involved in HR.

The particular HR system I have been consulting on is a commercial off-the-shelf application, or COTS application, so there was no requirement from the client for unit testing of the product. Instead the focus for me and the Sogeti team was testing the design and flow of underlying business processes. The application has the ability to change businesses processes almost instantly – which is just as well, as HR involves such a breadth and depth of those processes.

HR systems basically have to capture all of life’s events. You have a fundamental change in your personal situation and need to change your benefits; you plan to start a family so parental leave and allowances need to be calculated; all salaries change but have to be processed on time with the correct tax calculations; you book leave which needs to be tracked; you get married or promoted and need to change your tax codes; you have a young family and need to have flexible working time.

Employees don’t want to know the details of how things are processed and nor should they. They just need payments to be processed, changes made where necessary and to be paid at the end of the month. However, from the perspective of the HR system administrator it’s a very different story because it’s about the complex flow of HR processes.

So here was the challenge for me and the Sogeti team: how do you start testing a complex HR application when the businesses processes haven’t been clearly defined yet? Where do you start?

Luckily at Sogeti we have a lot of experience in this field, and we know how to tackle complex process-based testing with thorough consulting. Our long-term, hands-on experience with large complex systems means that we know how to work closely with our clients to advise them, walk them through the ways that system may be used, to develop test scripts based against yet-undefined business processes and to modify these through system testing through to user acceptance testing. At each stage we gain customer confidence, reach agreed goals, and we test.

Consulting is about ensuring that our customer – the business or organisation that has trusted us with the most inner workings of their business processes – fully understands and supports the implementation, the consultation and advice that we offer.

A trusting client relationship, such as the one I developed with this HR implementation, not only means we reach our goals, but makes my work as a consultant personally more rewarding. You say complex business processes? I say a great project to work closely with a great client.

Software is at the heart of all of our lives – how we work, how we communicate and how we live. Our role in this industry as software testers is therefore far more than a removed appraisal of software implementation risks, error assessment and test execution. Because we are as reliant on professional, efficient software as many of our clients, we know the advantages of working with those organisations closely. We use carefully tailored solutions built through a respectful understanding of their business situation, values and requirements in our working relationship.

A career at Sogeti provides a unique blend of technical challenges, business appreciation and client relationship building. This offers a very attractive proposition for ambitious graduates looking to make a real impact on the performance and success of leading businesses. This month, Sogeti is taking part in the ‘Milkround’ to attract higher education leavers to apply for our Graduate Recruitment Programme. The scheme, which starts in June and September, is an industry-leading training programme that includes ISEB/ISQTB training, as well as our own six-week intensive training programme. This combination ensures that each of our Trainee Test Consultants becomes fully trained in our consulting methods before they begin working on the client side of our business.

If you’ve never heard the term ‘Milkround’ before in this context, it was coined in the UK to describe the tour of universities and colleges that many businesses take each year to market the career opportunities they offer graduating students. Many people find it surprising that we recruit graduates from any degree background; however software testing is a challenging area that suits a complex skillset. So while an interest in computer science and technology is a must, a degree in computer science is not, although we do require graduates that have shown they can apply themselves and have achieved a degree of 2:1 or higher.

So far we have seen a tremendous uptake in our programme, and we’re on track to reach our goal of 50 new graduates joining Sogeti in 2012. Over the next few posts we will be sharing some of the viewpoints from graduates that have already completed our programme. They will share their experiences, as well as their own take on the benefits of working with Sogeti and the Capgemini Group.

All graduates considering their first career move and reviewing their options should consider the increasing demand for talented software testers and the continued growth of this vibrant industry. In its ‘Software Testing Assessment and Forecast; January 2012’, NelsonHall analysts reported that: “onboarding of new career testers globally will be a continuing challenge for the industry”. The advisory firm also reflected upon the imperative to train an increasing number of inexperienced testers into qualified, confident professionals as the industry continues to grow.

Interested to find out more? Email us, check out our Facebook or follow us on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you.

There is an old Taoist saying:

In the beginning there was the Tao;
When the Tao was lost then came the power;
When the power was lost then came religion;
When religion was lost then came ritual.

Of course you’ll wonder what this has to do with software testing. Well, I think that these four levels correspond to different levels of engagement within the test process.

Those who possess the Tao engage with each project as an element within the Tao, and seek to find ‘the flow’ that will deliver the objectives. They know that every project, in its own way, is trying to deliver quality and value and they endeavour to aid the flow of the project towards these objectives. The question they ask themselves is: “What does the project need me to do?” and they ask that question every day, as the answer can change every day.

Not everyone can feel the flow of a project and respond with the flexibility of those who have the Tao. Others have observed projects and seen techniques that work; they embrace these techniques and thus have the testing power that comes from these techniques. But they are wise enough to know that the techniques are limited and need to be moulded to the requirements of the project in hand. The question they ask when they come to a project is: “How can I adapt my techniques for this project?”

Then there are those who believe in the power of the techniques but do not understand the need for flexibility within their approach. They take those methods, array them in an ideal form and seek to impose this ideal form onto any project. When they come to a project, the question they ask is: “How can I make this project fit to my techniques?” This is where test techniques are taken as statements of faith and map to a belief that, if the procedures are followed, then success will come. Between the power and religion of testing, there is a major change in emphasis. Those who apply the Tao and the power have the attitude that they are servants of the project and that they should adapt to the needs of the project. Those who follow the religion see the observation of the techniques as the vital factor in project success.

Finally, there are those who learn the techniques but have little understanding of why they work, and without such understanding they cannot be flexible. When these techniques fail, they do not try to understand the reasons why, and instead seek safety in following the ritual of their techniques. For these testers the question they ask themselves is: “How can I prove that I followed best practice?”

So what question do you ask yourself when you come to a project?

And apologies to SAP as this was not about the SAP Test Acceleration and Optimization (SAP TAO) software which streamlines the creation and maintenance of ERP business process testing. But then maybe it was ….

Although the title of this blog post sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock film it actually refers to something a lot less sinister. I would like to offer you some insight into the positive impact of Sogeti UK‘s ‘Third Thursday’ meetings, a forum at which our testers have the opportunity to share topics and stories that they are passionate about with their colleagues. These meetings take place at our London Wall offices, predictably, on the third Thursday of each month.

Our last meeting ran under the heading ‘Fighting Layout Bugs’. Sreekanth Bongunuri, a member of Sogeti’s Test Automation Team, shared details of a project for a large train operator, and talked about a product with the same name.

Before I say much more about Fighting Layout Bugs (FLB), I should mention that our sister business unit Capgemini recently won the bid to develop a brand new web tier for this train operator. As part of the project, Sogeti now delivers services around integration and system testing, as well as test governance of a third party supplier that provides a new shopping and booking engine. Just to give you an idea of this complex test setup, our team needs to check that the new web tier both runs and displays correctly on three versions of four different browsers across a variety of operating systems and screen resolutions, using both manual and automated testing methods.

When Paul Sheldrake, a member of Capgemini’s development team, brought FLB to our attention, we quickly realised its potential value. The application not only delivers continuous HTML and CSS validation, it also detects typical layout bugs using Java Scrip and image processing. Since FLB is an open source code tool, Sreekanth was able to customise it so that the application would run with Selenium 2 (Webdriver) to automate the test process, and it has proven to be very successful in detecting layout defects.

The layout defects we find include overlapping fonts on the vertical or horizontal edges of the webpage as well as invalid image URLs (i.e. images on the webpage that are not loaded properly). Finding such defects so early in the development stage dramatically improves the quality of the website’s appearance, which is something that we hoped other test teams would find useful as well.

Sreekanth’s presentation sparked a lively discussion during and after his session. It soon became apparent that the work we’ve done on this particular project has created a significant opportunity to promote this early defect detection feature as a service to other clients as well.

If you would like to know more about the product, you can watch a video featuring FLB product author Michael Tamm at or download the FLB code here.