Painters
CASE STUDY
QUALITY ENGINEERING & TESTING

New agile approach delivered significant financial return

Sogeti helps application development align with business requirements for Yell.

Background

The process of maintaining, developing and releasing new and innovative products is a complex and time consuming task of which application testing is a critical element. Given the specialization required to ensure that critical software projects are delivered to a high quality, Yell approached Sogeti in 2005 to review their QA processes and make recommendations to improving them.

Solution

Sogeti has worked closely with Yell in the UK to ensure that its products are delivered with high quality and within acceptable time frames. This has been achieved through the cultivation of a deep partnership over a long period of time, ensuring that Sogeti understands Yell’s business. The adoption of Sogeti’s Test Management services was also critical to the success of Yell’s high value projects and programs. Sogeti also led the adoption of best practices for testing within an Agile/Scrum Development methodology.

The key facets of Sogeti’s service provision were:

  • Rapid mobilisation, which engaged stakeholders efficiently at the start so that their needs were considered and unknown needs recognised.
  • Short cycles, meant that useful deliverables are available frequently and continuously and therefore are visible and available to stakeholders, which meant that there was regular and frequent feedback. Teamwork style was open with low overhead, focused, joint commitment and ownership.
  • Managing priorities, between the strategic goal and the short cycle goal became more effective. The approach facilitated regular and frequent praisal of risks and priorities from a software quality perspective.
  • Support for Test Driven Development, which means an agreement up front as to what will be the acceptable and exactly how it will be confirmed, ensuring that the provider confirms before delivery.

Benefits

Yell’s relationship with Sogeti has delivered significant financial returns to their business benefits and continues to improve its ability to deliver innovative, business critical projects on time and within budget. The new agile approach requires even more flexible resources along with technical knowledge and awareness of the Yell’s application. In response to this Sogeti is able to provide staff augmentation services that match the rapidly changing needs of Yell’s technology services requirements. With an average recruitment cost of approximately 15% of each individual’s salary excluding bonuses and benefits, the long-term financial savings made at Yell through its Sogeti partnership is significant.

The relationship with Sogeti has helped Yell create an application development environment that is closely aligned to the requirements of the business. Sogeti is proud to support this effort through demonstrating how QA can become a value add to the business by delivering critical applications in a timely and accurate manner without incurring huge staffing costs. As the next generation of applications come online, Sogeti will continue to work closely with Yell to ensure that business priorities are met while the valuable knowledge is retained and enhanced for the benefit of the business.

What the client had to say

Sogeti has helped us to meet critical deadlines and ensure that our QA teams are staffed by experts with a good understanding of our business processes without incurring costly and time consuming recruitment overheads.” - Adam Williams, IS Test & QA Group Manager, Yell UK

Contact
  • Paul Collins
    Paul Collins
    Commercial Director Sogeti UK
    +447825625001
About Yell

Yell offers quality business leads and marketing solutions to small and medium sized enterprises in the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain and some countries in Latin America via the Internet and both fixed and mobile telephone services.

Behind the scenes, Yell makes extensive use of advanced enterprise resource planning, business intelligence and web based services to deliver a diverse range of products available in multiple languages across the globe.