The Company
Galp is one of the world’s energy companies that has taken more significant strides towards the decarbonization of its business, becoming one of Iberia’s top solar PV producers, taking the lead on European green hydrogen production and committing half of its yearly Capex to low carbon projects.
The company operates through four different units: Upstream (oil and gas exploration and production), Industrial and Midstream (trading, refining and logistics), Commercial (energy and oil products distribution to businesses and residential clients), and Renewables and New Businesses (renewable energy, green hydrogen, low-carbon fuels, battery value chain).
To support and bring innovation to these units, Galp develops and maintains software applications internally. It also manages a large number of projects, including implementation and technological upgrades, with a team of more than 110 QA Testers (both in-house and external) and many developers, project managers, and stakeholders. All these projects encompass over 75,000 active test cases with more than 250,000 test steps.
Galp’s quality assurance and testing team has a strict quality certification process translated into how to build and manage test cases, which has become critical for their application development success.
The Challenge
Galp’s team used another ALM solution for more than a decade before switching its test management software to Xray. In 2020, the development team had to uniformize processes and switched to a single Agile project management tool – Jira. As a result, the QA team decided to look for a new test management app that lived natively within Jira. This would allow Galp to improve its quality certification processes and resolve existing frustrations.
Some of Galp’s main challenges while using the previous ALM solution, were:
- Only a limited number of people had access to the testing assets – the high cost of licenses was a drawback in expanding access to all teams;
- QA and Development were working in silos, with no transparency between different teams, and difficult communication;
- The legacy UI was cumbersome and users were unhappy with it, adding unnecessary frustration to their daily activities;
- Official documentation needed to be better detailed, and there wasn’t enough extra information available online, adding complexity to the new team members’ learning curve.
For Galp, having both development and test management tools fully integrated, with all tests linked to requirements, was an absolute condition. Without this, it was impossible to have a complete understanding of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and have full traceability of the testing process.
“We needed to have full traceability from the requirement down to testing in one tool.”
The requirements demanded from the new test management tool were:
- Having a tool that was natively integrated with Jira that anyone in the company could use;
- Having all test cases centralized on a single test repository serving all projects instead of the usual “one test repository per project”;
- Having access to the entire test case pipeline for regression testing and being able to reuse test cases between projects that use the same functionalities;
- Allowing the QA and development teams to have 360º visibility over all projects – taking advantage of inter-project learnings and dependencies;
- Providing full traceability from the initial development requirements to the test results.
The Solution - Galp Test Repository (GTR)
With well-defined requirements and a clear vision of where Galp wanted to take its Quality program, the team searched for a test management app that would work seamlessly with Jira and fulfill the company’s needs and requirements checklist.
After carefully evaluating the multiple apps available for test management on the Atlassian Marketplace, Galp opted for Xray as the software to enhance its quality assurance and testing program, as Xray provided all the necessary requirements.
The next step was transferring all the information from the legacy ALM solution to Xray. This migration was phased out to ensure that no meaningful data was lost during the process. The migration turned out to be simpler than initially expected since test cases can be exported into an Excel/CSV format and directly imported into Xray.
In parallel with the migration, Galp implemented a training program to guarantee that the team could hit the ground running from day 1.
“In terms of training of the teams, it was a very simple process. Xray works as a seamless extension of Jira, so if you have worked with Jira before, it’s only a small leap to understand and start to use Xray”
This time, the onboarding process for the new software extended beyond just testers. It included developers, product managers, and other stakeholders who were now using Jira and Xray as part of their workflow.
With a range of diverse responsibilities, the onboarding process needed to be adapted. Using the vast resources available on Xray’s Academy, official documentation, and Xray’s ecosystem across the web for community-generated content, Galp created its training program, which is differentiated by user roles and company verticals.
Finally, to manage all the test cases, Galp created a single repository of Test Cases within a new Jira project named “Galp Test Repository - GTR,” and this project serves as the base repository for all the test cases that everyone must use.
Although test plans, executions, and defects can be created at the individual project level, all test cases are designed and maintained in this centralized location. This makes all tests visible to everyone and available for future use regardless of why and for what project they were created.
This new organization process for SDLC was made possible by the native integration of Jira and Xray. Moreover, Galp has put in place a system that allows it to scale its development processes sustainably to go hand-in-hand with the company's overall growth for years to come.
The Results
Galp’s vision for the future of its development and testing departments was for it to work as one, to have complete transparency over each other's requirements, and to have all projects tested in a standardized approach.
By trusting in Xray as their new test management app, Galp could leverage the learnings and good practices set over the previous decade with the legacy ALM solution alongside the upgrades and new features set by Xray and Jira, bringing its testing strategy to the next level.
The Quality team seeks to ensure that all Galp projects register test cases in the GTR (Galp Test Repository), delivering value for the future, whether through test automation or simple reuse in new projects.
Here are the 7 steps that led to the standardization of Test Case creation and maintenance and supported the vast increase in projects managed by Galp:
- QA Framework implementation - Adoption and dissemination of a quality framework based essentially on testing best practices, creating for example, simple infographics;
- GTR is mandatory for new projects - Contractual requirement to use the GTR to comply with the Galp’s QA framework, with a focus on certification and User Acceptance Testing (UAT);
- Mandatory training - Access to the GTR (through Xray) is subject to a mandatory training session in Galp’s QA Framework;
- Jira and Xray automation workflows - Implementation of Jira alerts for those who are creating test cases that they have missing information/non-compliances (eg. if a test case is created without a description or the test steps are not properly filled in);
- Detailed dashboarding - Implementation of Jira dashboards with rich filters, enabling users to conduct real-time individual and collective compliance assessments of test cases. Plus, new KPI developments supported with MS Power BI for more complex indicators (e.g. test quality compliance);
- Independent qualitative evaluation - Evaluation of test cases by an independent QA team that samples Galp’s test case repository and rates the quality of test cases using a pre-defined scaling system;
- Regression test automation - After a test case goes to production, there’s a selection and prioritization of the ones that should be placed for future automation.
"You can’t manage what you don’t measure"
Jira Dashboard Report
Power BI Dashboard
With these improvements, Galp was able to:
- Scale the number of active projects, QA teams, and stakeholders using the Test Assets
- Expand the QA team and promote a higher use of GTR by other stakeholders from Galp (POs, PMs, BAs, Business Users)
- Move from 70 development projects to 150
- Increase from 32,500 Active Test Cases to 75,000
- Track new metrics to evaluate testing performance:
- 93% test quality compliance: tests are created with necessary basic information
- 100% regression support: the objectives of the number of tests identified for regression test, for test automation, and their execution was achieved
- 80% productive execution: test created versus test executed
- Other KPIs that are tracked include the number of defects that pass to production and the time that critical defects take to be resolved.
Redefining quality with Xray and Galp
Galp streamlined its processes by adopting Xray as a centralized test management solution and implementing a comprehensive Quality Framework. This approach has fostered a culture of continuous improvement and operational efficiency, allowing the organization to leverage cross-project learnings and dependencies.
Integrating Xray also improved the performance and precision of Galp's testing processes. The introduction of innovative features, allowed only by the native integration of Xray and Jira, like JQL functions and the development of Jira dashboards have provided invaluable insights, ensuring high standards in test case creation and overall compliance. Standardizing processes and terminologies also allowed for faster onboarding of new hires and contractors.
Xray’s folder-like structure of the test repository, similar to other explorer tools and MS Windows, simplified the onboarding of new team members and the creation of rules to attribute each folder to a project. Achieving full traceability from requirements to test executions, to defects, all in one platform, improving test coverage and standardizing acceptance criteria.
These achievements, along with significant cost efficiencies and improved quality audits, underscore the profound impact that Xray has had on Galp's pursuit of testing excellence, setting a new industry standard for quality and efficiency.
