If the contact centre goes down, customers cannot reach the insurer. With several thousand customer advisers operating nationwide around the clock, there is no margin for error.
The Contact Centre Infrastructure division of one of Germany’s leading primary insurers is responsible for ensuring the high availability of its communication systems. The aim of the project was to replace the existing Skype-based telephony solution with Microsoft Teams.
What appeared to be a straightforward software migration proved significantly more complex in practice. Behind the scenes, numerous services had to be integrated, systems adapted and an Azure cloud integration implemented.
The deliverables provided by the external software developer failed to meet the requirements in terms of both quality and schedule. The project structure was unclear, responsibilities were poorly defined and the team lacked momentum. Testing could not proceed as planned because there were no test-ready deliverables available.
At the same time, numerous business units with widely differing testing requirements were waiting to conduct their acceptance tests. For an infrastructure in which every outage has an immediate impact, the requirements for transparency, coordination and traceability of the test status were correspondingly high.
The Turning Point: Structure Drives Progress
The decisive impetus came not from a new tool or a different testing approach, but from a structural reorganisation of the project. New project leadership was introduced, and the project was divided into clearly defined workstreams, each with its own responsibilities.
Test management was established as a dedicated workstream with clear ownership of quality, acceptance and sign-off. From that point onwards, test management operated on an end-to-end basis:
The test concept was developed and agreed.
All participating business units were coordinated.
Defect management and escalation procedures were established.
The test status was reported regularly and in a structured manner.
his relieved the pressure on the business units. Instead of organising the testing themselves, they could focus on conducting the tests and assessing the results from a business perspective.
The result was a structured, timely testing process and a robust basis for the go-live decision.
Three important lessons emerged from this project.
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