CAST 2013

The entire approach toward software testing was drastically transformed at a major health insurance company over the past year. In 2010, Brian Demers was hired to guide “transformational change” in the testing department at Premera Blue Cross based near Seattle, WA.

Brian explains the successes and failures that he had over the past three years. He talks about what worked, what didn’t work and the steps that eventually brought him to his decision to train his entire test department and their management in a different approach to software testing.

Paul Holland, an independent software consultant and teacher, was brought in to help Brian with the transformation. Paul taught the Rapid Software Testing class to the ~70 testers, four test managers, and the test director. He helps Brian explain this success story from the viewpoint of the facilitator and teacher.

Brian and Paul explain how the test teams were trained, how the teams were involved after the training to get their buy-in to the implementation, what improvements have been seen and how difficulties were overcome.