The Testersuite team deals with many practical situations on a daily basis with regard to acceptance testing. In this blog, our Testersuite test consultant writes Dirk Janssen about the collaboration within a test project between three Nexus hospitals.
In this blog:
- Test maturity
- Nexus hospitals
- Testing together
- Testing best practices together
- Post-implementation testing
Test maturity
As a testing consultant, I have been visiting organizations in numerous industries for many years. Each organization in itself is unique and is at a different level of test maturity.
What these organizations have in common is the dot on the horizon regarding the quality level of the applications. The route to be taken by taking a structured approach to testing, among other things, is less unique than you might think beforehand.
Of course, the road to it is unique. You have to deal with different cultures, people, size of teams, type of leadership, etc. But ultimately, much of this journey to a mature testing process has many common denominators.
Nexus hospitals
A great example of the above is the collaboration between a trio of Testersuite-clients that I guide from Testersuite to higher test maturity. In this case we are talking about the hospitals Treant, Anna and Ommelander. These three Nexus hospitals differ in size, culture and geographical location.
Still, there are common denominators such as the use of the Nexus EHR. This will soon be joined by the new joint medication application. Here Testersuite is being used to support the implementation.
For example, functional design is tested jointly by functional management and user acceptance testing (GAT) is conducted with end users. For example, doctors, nurses and pharmacists conduct the user acceptance test in a structured manner with Testersuite . In doing so, they also record the test results and defects in Testersuite .
Testing together
Such a collaboration between Nexus houses is then quickly arranged right? Just a matter of jointly setting up and reusing the test base and test cases and done. Well, the answer to that is yes and no.
Of course, a number of things are taken care of quickly. This applies, for example, to setting up the test base. By this we mean the exposition of the application structure and processes in Testersuite. After all, the application is the same for everyone. So a so-called functional test, or button test, is the same for all three hospitals.
However, when you kick off the process, the difference begins. Because as it turns out, no two hospitals work exactly the same. For example, the order in which test cases are approved often differs. Internal work processes also differ from hospital to hospital. Take as an example the method of prescribing medications. This differs per hospital or even per department. So this is simply not the same everywhere.
Thus, if in a collaboration you blindly adopt and approve another hospital's successfully completed test case, you increase the risks and thus the chance of errors. This therefore creates false security.
Testing best practices together
So what do you base cooperation on? This is primarily focused on collaboration from the bottom up. The collaboration of the aforementioned Nexus hospitals consists of sharing the test base with each other from the"product tree" in Testersuite.
When this is in place, the first basic application test/button test is then shared. After that, collaboration consists of knowledge sharing regarding test designs, test cases and End-to-End testing through test scenarios.
By periodically sharing and discussing this with each other from the same test process and test format in Testersuite, knowledge and results are shared very efficiently. This allows excel within the joint testing process.
Together, the three hospitals have an overview and insight regarding the testing process from Testersuite . This helps enormously within projects such as the implementation of the new complex medication application.
Just think of the many possible combinations of drugs that should or should not be possible within the application. Overview and insight gives different types of end users clarity as to what is expected of them.
The recorded test results are easily discussed with each other, both internally and between hospitals. The identified defects can be easily reviewed and prioritized. This also makes communication to the software vendor easier.
Post-implementation testing
It is also beautiful and immensely valuable to see that the often externally connected healthcare consultants, in this case BeterHealth, thus secure knowledge with respect to the project. The management and user organization can therefore continue with the secured knowledge immediately after implementation. After all, after the initial implementation, the real work begins for the hospitals.
In addition to daily intensive operational use of the application, updates, releases, extensions follow. This requires time and again quality assurance and insight into risks and opportunities for errors. The three Nexus hospitals will be able to do this very well from the basic (regression) test set built up in Testersuite.
From Testersuite we love to see the cooperation between the hospitals. Great that Testersuite gets to contribute to that.
