Test Data Management: A Healthcare Industry Case Study
- 1. BT3 Concurrent Session 11/12/15 10:00am “Test Data Management: A Healthcare Industry Case Study” Presented by: Jatinder Singh and Shaheer Mohammed Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Brought to you by: 340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073 888-268-8770 · 904-278-0524 · [email protected] · www.techwell.com
- 2. Jatinder Singh Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Jatinder Singh has ten years of IT consulting experience—seven years as a quality assurance lead in banking, retail, and health-care domains; and three years as a test data management (TDM) engineer in healthcare. Part of the Dell TDM Team at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Jatinder has worked as test data lead on two major projects requiring continuous test data delivery. Shaheer Mohammed Harvard Pilgrim Health Care With almost fifteen years of experience in IT consulting, Shaheer Mohammed has worked as a developer, QA tester, TDM engineer, and project manager. He has experience in various business verticals including healthcare, retail, and banking. Currently, Shaheer is the account manager for CGI at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) and technical lead for HPHC’s Test Data Management (TDM) team. He helped HPHC architect the TDM strategy from concept to full implementation.
- 3. Test Data Management: A Health Care Industry Case Study Shaheer Mohammed, Jatinder Singh November 12, 2015 Company Overview Harvard Pilgrim Health Care – Not-for-profit health services company serving members throughout CT, ME, MA, and NH. Mission: to improve the quality and value of health care for the people and communities we serve. Dell Services – Helps global organizations achieve unique business goals, improve competitiveness, and serve customers better. CGI – Founded in 1976, CGI is a global IT and business process services provider with 68,000 professionals delivering high-quality business consulting, systems integration, and managed services. 9/15/20152 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc.
- 4. What is Test Data Management? 3 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 The Test Data Management team (TDM) is a centralized group created to support enterprise demand for test data TDM is responsible for: Identifying and creating data for testing activities (test data and dependent data) End-to-End testing data dependency subject matter expertise Business process flow subject matter expertise What are the Benefits of TDM? Improved testing accuracy by supplying valid test data Reduced testing turnaround time Consistent results for regression testing Reduced storage requirements Reduced overall delivery cost while improving quality 4 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 5. TDM Team Responsibilities Provides test data to the business, IT developers, and testers Ensures test data delivered maintains relational integrity across applications Acts as test data stewards in various test environments Acts as SMEs for end-to-end test data processing, test case development, and process troubleshooting Designs and builds automation tools and utilities to create, alter and deliver data faster and more efficiently 5 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 Our Key Challenges Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) – Interdependent applications across different platforms – Multiple end-to-end business process flows across applications and platforms – Data dependencies between platforms and apps – Applications consume different data formats – Some test environments may have missing dependent components required to complete testing – Common test data tools generally focus on the needs of one particular application or business process 6 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 6. Our Key Challenges (Continued) Data complexity – Complex business rules – Data processing spanning multiple business functional areas Multiple environments to support – Project, development, and test instances – Some integrated, some standalone – Different data in each environment Working in a hybrid traditional waterfall / Agile model 7 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 Our Solutions: End-to-End Data Flow Diagrams Mapped out the end-to-end data flow of each business process (claim-to-payment, quote-to-card, product configuration, billing and finance) – Identified all possible test data entry points in the process flow – Identified the format in which the test data could be injected in the entry points – Identified dependent reference data required to be in place to enable valid transactions – Identified rules that would affect test data consumption – Identified areas where a business process requires manual intervention 8 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 7. Our Solutions: Custom Tools Created customized tools for generating, loading, and validating test data – Created tools that automate validation of dependent reference data before test data is generated – Created mass test data sets based on the dependent data validation and test data requirements – Created tools that stub out data for environments that are not fully integrated – Created tools to load test data into various entry points – Created tools to validate test data that was generated and loaded per the requirement – Instead of large generic tools, we created smaller customized tools targeted to the injection points / applications 9 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 Our Solutions: Kanban Delivery Process Created a centralized request and delivery process Managed and prioritized work using Agile-Kanban methodology – Created a standardized test data request template – Used Kanban methodology to assign the request – Created rules of engagement to prioritize the request – Assigned and prioritized requests daily – Collected request and delivery data as input for analysis to improve process – Used request trends to focus automation effort – Reported trends weekly / monthly to determine team size and allocation 10 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 8. Our Solutions: Test Data Liaison For large projects and programs we added a Test Data Liaison Test Data Liaison roles: – Data / process SME – Test data point of contact – Source of smaller test data request delivery – Core TDM team interface for status updates and TDM deliverable requests – Knowledge transfer: teach resources how create own test data where practical 11 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 How We Did It: Test Data Request Process 12 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 9. How We Did It: TDM Process 13 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 How We Did It: Team Approach TDM’s onsite and offshore team comprised of members from Dell and CGI with a very engaged HPHC product owner Daily Kanban standup to review work in progress and assign new requests All members are cross-trained in all major domain areas with specializations Dedicated test data automation lead embedded in team TDM liaison integrated with the project team and directly addresses team’s continuous test data delivery needs 14 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 10. We Did It Smart: Tools and Automation Easy claims generation tool – Testers can log into a UI and create test data as per their needs without help from TDM ICD09 to ICD10 claim conversion tool Utilities that edit data and transform formats in bulk: – EDI X12 – XML – Rate creation – Member creation File extraction – EDI – XML 15 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015 We’ve Evolved! Originally provided test data to IT QA but expanded to include business users performing UAT Increased delivery and reduced turnaround time without increasing team size TDM team provides SME consulting services to the large initiatives in ever-expanding areas of scope Assists in troubleshooting and resolving complex production support issues Empowers testers by creating self-service test data tools 16 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015
- 11. Questions 17 © 2015 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. 9/15/2015