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This year has proved to us that we must never get bogged down in routine and stop thinking creatively, because we never know when the circumstances will change. The COVID-19 pandemic put us all to the test and made us abandon the old ways of working almost overnight and find new ones as soon as possible. It was not an easy challenge, but it showed that when we invest energy and willpower, a great solution can always be found.
The COVID-19 virus caught our team preparing the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) for the Uganda Driver Licensing system. They did not give up or want to postpone FAT “for a better time”, so they managed to overcome all technical and other difficulties and we can proudly say that they successfully conducted the Factory Acceptance Test, completely remotely!
Yes, FAT can be done remotely!
Factory Acceptance Testing is the ceremony of officially testing our software in front of the client, in order to confirm that the software works as planned. This is an opportunity to once again determine whether the solution we have created and the needs of the clients match completely. As FAT is not the final pre-production test, this is an ideal time to make minor changes that were not covered by the functional specification or that were not explained clearly enough.
The usual procedure is to run FAT on a client in their test environment, to make sure the system is mature enough to soon be set up in a separate production environment. However, in the new situation with the COVID-19, it was not possible to perform testing in a traditional way, so it was necessary to find the best alternative.
What did it look like?
We came up with the idea to conduct the entire FAT from Belgrade, with a screen sharing session where the client could see what we were doing in the system, while along the way we filmed the client to see what the role of system operator and use all peripherals necessary for conducting the process of issuing driver’s licenses. So we were able to make the client feel like they were on the spot, and not miss a single test detail.
We have to admit that we did not have technical challenges, but the challenges were more of organizational nature. One week before FAT, we made sure that everything was working properly. We performed a dry run of all tests, with accompanying equipment, which was in abundance for this project (Canon Camera, Signature Pad, 10 fingerprint scanner, 2 fingerprint scanner, paper scanner, paper printer, receipt slip printer, barcode scanner).
In order to prepare for the next step, SAT (Site Acceptance Testing), the last formal testing ceremony before the software is released into production, we can be extremely pleased with the results achieved. The reason for such satisfaction is that there were no serious requests for changes, so we will not have to “change the foundation” of the solution, but to subtly direct the UDLS ship to the final destination.
Double the success
In addition to the success of doing FAT remotely, without deficiencies in quality and approach, this is our great success because we realized that we are able to overcome unplanned obstacles and challenges in a fast and efficient manner. Situations like this are the best confirmation that we really have a good team of experts who are able to cope well in any situation.
In addition to FAT remote testing, there was another novelty – the FAT document was officially signed, also remotely!
