The Customer

With 7,300 stores in 11 countries and over 200,000 employees, ALDI SÜD is one of the world’s leading grocery retailers. As the international IT service provider of the corporate group, ALDI International Services SE & Co. oHG comes into play whenever cross-border systems and technologies are involved. ALDI International Services SE & Co. oHG serves as an innovator and driver for the ongoing digitalization within the corporate group.

The Task

To meet the complex demands of an international retail business, ALDI relies on state-of-the-art IT solutions. Optimal process workflows, as well as maximum stability and speed, are essential to ensuring smooth operations in stores worldwide. In this dynamically evolving IT environment, which simultaneously depends on stability, intensive and continuous software testing is a key success factor.

To make its extensive quality assurance measures and testing activities even more efficient, ALDI SÜD decided to automate them to the greatest possible extent. Before implementing large-scale automation, the technical feasibility and approach were to be verified through a Proof of Concept (PoC) for three key system areas.

As experts in test automation, andagon people GmbH was selected as the partner for conducting the PoC.

The Challenge

The goal of the PoC was to demonstrate the automation feasibility of End2End test scenarios for central systems in the "Stores" domain using a lean toolset and framework. The challenge included handling different technologies, two versions of the central systems, as well as country-specific functions and processes.

For this purpose, the PoC was divided into two areas. First, the selected automation tool had to assess each dialog of the applications under test to determine whether all elements could be recognized and interacted with. For elements that could not be captured by the automation tool, workarounds had to be found.

In the second part of the PoC, specific End2End test cases were automated. These test cases were selected by ALDI SÜD to be representative of the entire set of test cases and covered all software components to be automated, including a mobile application used in stores.

To gain a realistic impression of the potential large-scale scaling of test automation, a clearly defined timeframe was set for the PoC, and access to the automation tool was regulated. By specifying a fixed number of test cases to be automated, a measurable basis for evaluating the PoC’s performance was established.

The Solution with andagon

The eight-member PoC team included automation experts from andagon with varying levels of tool expertise, ensuring that the project met its objectives in a realistic and economically viable team composition, particularly with a view toward planned scaling. On the client side, the PoC was supervised by a single technical point of contact.

The two areas of the PoC were carried out in parallel to identify and resolve potential technical challenges early in the project. Weekly status reports were created for both the application dialog analysis and the ongoing automation of test cases and were discussed with ALDI SÜD’s project management.

Thanks to excellent preparation—both organizationally by ALDI SÜD and technically by andagon—the ambitious project scope was successfully implemented from the outset. The timeline was met and even exceeded, with the PoC completed 20% ahead of schedule.

“The test experts from andagon have demonstrated their professionalism and reliability in this technically and time-sensitive Proof of Concept (PoC). The outstanding results of the PoC have clearly confirmed the strategic importance of test automation. We will continue to collaborate with andagon’s test experts in the future.”
Sebastian Völlmar
Senior IT Manager at ALDI DX

Customer Benefits

With the PoC successfully completed in all aspects, ALDI SÜD’s project management was able to confirm the feasibility and efficiency of test automation in practice. The previous tool selection made by ALDI was also positively validated by andagon.

The measurable results of the PoC provided ALDI’s project management with a solid basis for calculating the cost and time frame for rolling out test automation, thereby minimizing the overall risk of a larger investment.

Technologies Used

The “Tosca Testsuite” from Tricentis was used for test automation. After evaluating the dialogs in the first part of the PoC, approximately 60% of the requirements could be implemented using Tosca’s standard functions. For the remaining requirements, workarounds and custom controls were developed or identified as necessary.

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