Royal Bank of Canada

About This Project

Information Professionals was engaged by Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to cover multiple roles on the Australian Integration Project (AIP).  As the Global Program QA, we were responsible for multiple tranches of functional regression testing and the UAT effort, both manual and automated, to prove that existing countries were not affected.  This testing activity was coordinated out of Sydney with support out of Luxembourg and Kuala Lumpur.

The Situation

RBC is a global bank, and this project oversaw a complex multifaceted project to migrate Australian customers to the Banks’s global fund accounting platform modified to support Australian clients. Changes to the core application along with Inflows, Outflows (Downstream Integration and Reporting), and Client Transition including printer servers generating over 150K reports each business day.

Information Professionals was engaged by Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to cover multiple roles on the Australian Integration Project (AIP).  As the Global Program QA, we were responsible for multiple tranches of functional regression testing and the UAT effort, both manual and automated, to prove that existing countries were not affected.  This testing activity was coordinated out of Sydney with Luxembourg and Kuala Lumpur.

The projects main goal is to migrate all current Australian customers from the existing Fund Accounting platform to the banks global fund accounting platform requiring communication across a wide range of disciplines both internally and externally to RBC.  The Global Fund Accounting solution needed to be modified by the vendor to support Australian clients without impacting the other 9 countries that are already live, and ensuring the vendor relationship continued to provide the ongoing support for those services.  This required close coordination wide range of disciplines internally and externally and detailed testing management of a complex multiple-server technical environment with commitment from the vendor to support the ongoing testing, testing change outcomes, and final solution.

The Approach

The test coordination, planning and deliver included for managing numerous parallel runs against the multi-server production environment across 9 geographies integrating 16 other applications. Configuration management was relied upon (Jenkins).  Apart from changes required to the core application other development needed to be undertaken which included Inflows, Outflows (Downstream Integration and Reporting), and Client Transition, the development was done using both Agile and Waterfall methodology depending on which region was undertaking the work.
Significant amounts of non-functional testing were required to support the changes.  A standard suite of performance tests was developed to exercise many aspects of the solution architecture with particular focus on generating reports and how printer servers dealt with the load of 150,000 reports being generated each business day on the back of some very complex Net Asset Valuation calculation within the funds structures.  As expected this required extensive knowledge of internet and telecommunications technologies (TCP/IP, routing, bridging, SSL, mail).

IPG’s role included developing Test Strategies, Test Plans, scenarios and test cases across system, integration, regression and user acceptance testing domains.  Test scope also included non-functional testing such as Stress, Load and Performance testing, Security, and Penetration testing.  This planning identifies the objectives of the testing (aligned to the Program Plan, the development methodology and technologies), the scope of system under test, test criteria, example scenarios, and entry/exit criteria.  Dependencies and Risks are covered.  Risks and Issues were included and managed via risk and issue registers. Roles and Responsibilities were defined including specific personnel – ensuring each resource understands what is required of them.

The Test Analysis and Design generates an effective set of core activities during test execution, including test scenarios, cases and associated inputs and expected outputs from the test execution phase.  Where Test Environments, Test Data sets, and Test Harnesses or stubs may be required, they were defined, designed and implemented. A test run sheet aligned with the development delivery schedule outlining the order in which the testing should occur.

Test management tools included HP, Rationale and Jira.  The overall test management solution was about ensuring that an integrated and efficient method and approach was defined, including where possible and productive, appropriate test tools.

The Impact

Testing was completed successfully and on time.  The performance was validated to ensure it met the KPIS for the solution.  The system delivered successfuly to its quality standards.

1. Testing was completed successfully and on time
2. The performance was validated to ensure it met the KPIs for the solution
3. The system quality was maintained through the transitions and into each successful go-live.