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Finance

 

Background
DtA is a business start-up and SME promotion agency of the German Federal Government. The bank is a "one-stop shop" for financial and consulting services, thus catering for all aspects of start-up management. Its loans, guarantees and participations are tailored to the needs of its customers (business start-ups and SMEs). In 2000, the bank granted its customers more than 54,000 loans with a total value of around € 4.7 billion.

DtA has three branches, in Bonn, Berlin and Brussels, and is one of Germany's 30 largest banks. The company has been in existence for over 50 years and during that time has also always been a bank specialising in business start-ups. It was originally set up in order to facilitate the economic integration of displaced persons and refugees in West Germany after the 2nd World War by means of investment loans. In its function as a "Lastenausgleichsbank" (literally, bank for the equalisation of burdens), it played an important role in the system of financial compensation for losses suffered after WWII. Since the end of the 60s, the bank has developed finance for business start-ups and conservation as its core fields, and has become the German Federal Government's business start-up and SME promotion agency.

The Task
DtA's web portal, www.dta.de, has been on-line since September 2001 and is currently being developed into a platform covering all services. In addition to the traditional information functions, the new portal will increasingly facilitate interaction between DtA and its customers. In the first phase, the DtA portal will support business founders in completing the various applications for financing.

The web-based application feature is DtA's first fully interactive application in its web portal. The development team had to work to a fixed deadline by which the system had to be stable and go live. In addition, the quality requirements were higher than those for conventional IT applications. Since web based applications are accessed directly by end users, the bank did not want to allow any software bugs to be seen at all. These bugs may have been tolerable if they had only been seen internally.

These were the conditions in which the performance test for the web application had to take place - a test for which DtA had no methodical or operational expertise at the time. Since the project was limited in terms of time and financing, there were no resources for the development of an internal infrastructure and no employee expertise. The Bonn-based IT specialists thus called in the external test specialists at the SQS TestLAB.

The Solution
DtA took a completely different course with the help of SQS. The bank maintained control of the test project but delegated the operational software testing tasks to the external experts. The TestLAB has infrastructure for all of the major types of software testing, including performance testing of web applications.
The performance test was prepared, conducted, documented and any necessary improvements incorporated within seven days. The effort was divided up as follows:
" ½ day preparatory workshop at which the test objectives were defined (DtA and SQS)
" Three days for the tool-aided generation of test scripts (DtA and SQS)
" Three days of testing (SQS)
" ½ day follow-up and evaluation workshop (DtA and SQS)

The following tasks were performed at DtA:

  • Drawing-up of test concept
  • Recording of the data flow using a load tool and
  • Generation of the test scripts on the basis of the recorded data flow

 

 

 

The following tasks were carried out in the SQS TestLAB:

  • Modification of the TestLAB infrastructure in line with DtA-specific conditions
  • Access to application provider
  • Test execution and evaluation
  • Improvements (elimination of bottlenecks)
  • Test documentation

 

 

 

 

Success Factors and Benefits for the Customer:

  • The application went live on schedule
  • The test results and the performance-test costs were on budget
  • Since the bugs were totally eliminated, there were no follow-up costs for DtA or operational bottlenecks
  • DtA did not have to set up its own infrastructure for this tightly scheduled and budgeted project
  • There was no expenditure on recruitment and training for the performance test operation
  • The tool rental for the test period was only a small fraction of what it would have cost to purchase the tool
  • The SQS TestLAB infrastructure and expertise guaranteed optimum deployment of external resources