Viacar’s mission is to make the management of the Swiss transport system fast, easy, and efficient for all who use it. Its clients are six Swiss cantons and it has registered over half of Switzerland’s vehicles and boats. This information is used by law enforcement (for driving license information and drug/alcohol-related driving offences), garages (for MOT certificates), and individuals buying or selling cars (number plate history).
The Viacar system is a modern software solution that covers all relevant business processes for road traffic agencies. It is used by the client cantons on a SaaS basis, making it easy to implement and maintain. To align with its digital strategy, and to provide a modern and cost-effective solution, Viacar has embarked on a large-scale project to redevelop its flagship solution. The project ‘RoutePlus’ is done in close collaboration with the client cantons and will replace the current solution, ready to embrace the future.
Michael Florin, Test Manager for Viacar, explains why its test management solution needed a rethink: “We have been using a test management software for many years. While it did everything we needed, it wasn’t particularly user-friendly and it required a part-time administrator, a big commitment for our QA team of eight. Our canton users are not professional QA testers, and they often struggled with the English-only interface. Our canton’s languages are German and French, and we would love to give our clients a local-language option with their interface. With this major redevelopment process we realized we needed a specialized test management solution to support us. The product development is done externally, and they do the unit level testing. It is then up to us to manage all the functional and defect testing, together with our clients.”
Viacar needed one solution to plan, track, report, and execute its application testing process.
The development company uses JIRA as its defect management solution, and Viacar wanted to integrate its test management solution with JIRA for full visibility. Ease of use and dual-language support for the user interface were also high on the priority list. Viacar is looking to expand RoutePlus into other cantons, and a scalable and cost-effective test management solution will help with this.
When Mr Florin came across Silk Central, he was positive: “It certainly looked like Silk Central ticked all our boxes. We started a proof-ofconcept where two seasoned test managers examined the tool, using different test scenarios. With some 6,000 test cases in total, and 50 people working on this large, multi-year, project, it was vital that our new solution could manage a complete test cycle. Silk Central proved just that.”
Silk Central was set up as one application server with two different language GUIs, for German and French. All test cases are translated into both languages and managed with HTML tables into the text field; one side is German, the other side is French.
Viacar testers create any defects in Silk Central which integrates well into JIRA. A great help to the team according to Mr Florin: “We triage the defects from our customers directly in Silk Central to make sure they are readable to our developers and then we pass them over to JIRA for our developers to correct them. Silk Central in combination with JIRA gives us very transparent team communication.”
The client cantons assign staff to help test the software. About 50 employees are involved in every test cycle. In total over 1,000 different testers will have been involved to test the new Viacar RoutePlus solution, closely supported by the central Viacar QA team. Here, too, Silk Central’s open framework helps with collaboration, says Mr Florin: “Central visibility is key for us to see who is testing what in which canton. Silk Central helps avoid duplication and promotes test reuse across different cantons. The transparent model makes it easy for one tester to pick up from another at any point.”
Silk Central has moved Viacar towards providing a testing self-service model for its client cantons, as Mr Florin states: “Management of Silk Central is so much easier for us. We can simply drag and drop test cases, and our client contacts can execute tests themselves; currently with our support, but with a view to be entirely self-service in the future. Silk Central works out of the box, and is easy to configure. It isn’t over-engineered and has exactly the right amount of functionality for us to deliver a sophisticated test management platform, without intimidating our end user testers.”
He concludes: “Micro Focus worked closely with us to deliver the dual-language interface that our clients love, and we really appreciated the open communication and team effort. We received very responsive and knowledgeable support, and feel ready for the future with Silk Central at the heart of our testing platform.”
