A leading U.S. health insurer covering more than five million members faced a serious challenge: its internal leaders and developers had lost confidence in the enterprise software testing and QA organisation.
The company’s testing structure had been completely restructured, resulting in the loss of critical historical knowledge and expertise.
Without a functioning QA capability, the insurer was unable to manage platform migrations or launch the new digital products needed to meet its strategic business goals.
The QA function was fragmented, inconsistent, and lacked a unified strategy. “Project reporting was inconsistent, and no line of business or enterprise-level QA scorecards existed,” the case study noted.
Testing strategies were not technology-based, estimation approaches varied, and “automation was minimal, requiring fully manual regression testing.” The organisation had no formal quality gates or effective knowledge management processes in place.
Reflecting on the transformation, the health plan’s AVP of quality, testing and DevOps delivery said: “We needed to make a change and embark on a journey to continually improve our testing and delivery processes in order to reach our IT goal of ‘Delivering with Quality’.”
Revamping QA
To turn the situation around, the health plan partnered with software testing firm Cognizant to completely rebuild its QA and testing organisation, using the Test Maturity Model Integration (TMMi) framework as a roadmap.
“TMMi is a worldwide standard for measuring test maturity and guiding ongoing testing process improvement,” the company explained.
The framework provided a step-by-step structure for improving processes, test systems, and knowledge management across the business.
The collaboration mobilised Cognizant’s Quality, Testing and Delivery (QTD) team to centrally govern QA processes across the enterprise.
“Standardisation, operationalising a technology-centric QA strategy, ROI-driven decisions and improved knowledge-sharing and skills enhancement were key themes over the multiyear effort.”
Together, the teams defined a standard framework for test operations, automation and metrics, establishing tool-based enforcement to ensure QA standards were followed.
Critical objectives included “building consistent and repeatable QA practices and processes and developing a common understanding of the QA strategy and approach across the development organisation.”
Cognizant and the client automated more than 5,000 regression test scripts for 32 application areas and built over 40 solution accelerators.
The QTD team also led training and mentoring sessions to upskill the QA workforce, operationalising a knowledge management framework and strengthening the organisation’s maturity with QA tools and technologies.
Measurable results
By the end of 2022, the health plan’s QTD team achieved TMMi Maturity Level 5 certification, the highest level possible, becoming the first company in North America, and the first healthcare organisation globally, to reach that milestone.
The case study highlights that the organisation “avoided $20.6 million in costs over three years,” including $6.1 million in 2020, $7.5 million in 2021 and $6.9 million in 2022.
QA became a trusted resource across the business, delivering “more than 1,100 software and process changes to production just as the Covid-19 pandemic hit and its testers all went to full remote work.”
Projects included refreshing insurance coverage products and migrating legacy applications to Facets, Cognizant’s TriZetto core platform for healthcare organisations.
The transformation also embedded QA professionals directly into product development teams to ensure delivery of key business features.
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