A major commercial bank is focused on becoming the country’s pre-eminent financial institution by providing retail, corporate and government customers with the widest range of quality services.


The Testing Project

In 2004, the bank embarked on the implementation of their new banking systems. Due to the risks involved, they decided to engage the services of an independent party to certify the deliverables, minimise the risk, and give the bank confidence in the new systems.

During 2004 & 2005 Testhouse undertook the role of independent Third Party Certifier, and was responsible for certifying the implementation of new Treasury, Investment, Trade Finance, ALM, Brokerage & Private Banking systems. This was a very complex project that covered many different functional aspects of the system including Foreign Exchange, Money Markets, Securities Trading and Processing, Treasury, Risk Management, Portfolio Management, Derivatives, Import LC Issuance, Import LC Negotiations, Exposure management, Value At Risk calculations.

Testhouse’s initial role involved a two-week scoping exercise, which allowed Testhouse to analyse the current systems and requirements, as well as the proposed new systems. From this exercise a Test Strategy was produced that detailed the testing objectives; the functionality, hardware and software requirements of the System Under Test; the testing approach; the risks; the roles and responsibilities; the quality control process; and the schedule of work. This provided a structured and disciplined testing framework of testing processes and standards that would enable the new systems to be accurately tested prior to implementation.

The area of testing that was carried out by Testhouse was the System Integration Testing phase. During this phase, Testhouse was responsible for the planning, test preparation, and testing of the integration of the new systems with the existing systems. The aim being to ensure that the new systems did not expose the business to unacceptable problems and risks, and that they met the business requirements.

Testhouse’s role also included certifying the testing carried out by in-house personnel in the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase. Testhouse provided guidance on the areas that should be tested and reviewed the results of the UAT phase to ensure that areas of major priority had been covered and the application had been sufficiently tested enough to eliminate risk.

Upon completion of the testing, Testhouse was responsible for certifying that the Certification Requirements had been met, which in turn allowed the bank to release the percentage payments to the vendor companies. Without this certification they were not prepared to release the payments.

Moral of the Case Study

Testhouse has the capability to succesfully deal with large organisations and provide them with a valuable service that is not available from in-house testers.