Background
A key Australian Government agency required renewed quality assurance (QA) support for its financial assistance program platform – a critical national service that helps low to middle income families.
Following their successful involvement in the initial go-live, KJR was re-engaged to ensure stability, compliance, and user trust as the customer rolled out monthly releases, COVID-era changes, and inclusive design updates.
The platform needed consistent validation across back-end systems, and citizen-facing services under increasing public demand and regulatory scrutiny. These included internal users such as Customer Service Officers who assist the public with all financial assistance enquiries by using portals such as Process Direct (PD) and Customer First (CF) to ensure everyone in need of financial assistance could obtain the required assistance.
Challenge
KJR faced the challenge of embedding its Senior Tester into an established QA team as seamlessly as possible whilst being assigned business tasks and then performing all testing tasks such as planning, execution, and defect management. This was a fast-paced, policy-driven environment where feature releases, regulatory updates, and service expectations were rapidly evolving.
Key difficulties included managing cross-functional dependencies, maintaining coverage of regression risks across legacy and new features, and ensuring user-facing changes – such as cultural ID inclusions – were rolled out without introducing bugs or delays.
Importantly, QA activities had to align with strict government accessibility and service quality standards, while minimising the risk of disruption to families relying on financial assistance entitlements.
Solution
KJR responded with a strategic, embedded QA model. A senior consultant was integrated into the customer’s delivery team, providing continuity and domain knowledge across agile delivery cycles. KJR led test planning, executed functional and exploratory tests, and coordinated system integration validation across the financial assistance program services. A key focus was regression assurance – leveraging the customer’s SSX automation framework – to ensure that every monthly release maintained platform integrity and performance.
Partnering with product owners, KJR assessed the business and citizen impact of deferred or partially released functionality, contributing to better decision-making and risk mitigation. Throughout, the QA process was aligned with government priorities of inclusivity, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
Deliverables
- QA test planning for monthly financial assistance program feature releases
- Functional testing and validation for reforms (e.g., COVID-related free childcare, cultural background ID options)
- Regression assurance using automation suite (SSX)
- Risk-based QA strategy to limit consumer impact
- Collaboration on impact assessments for deferred functionality and policy-driven updates
- Supported seamless service delivery during major national reforms
Customer Benefit
Through KJR’s involvement, the customer was able to sustain a high-performing, resilient financial assistance program platform. The quality assurance approach improved issue detection early in the development cycle, leading to fewer production defects and reduced rework. This directly supported a more reliable experience for families using the MyGov financial assistance program portal and strengthened the customer’s reputation for consistent digital service delivery.
By embedding assurance expertise within the delivery team, KJR helped create a culture of quality, accountability, and user empathy – ensuring the customer could keep up with the changing needs of the Australian community during a time of national reform and recovery.
Tools & Technologies
- ALM
- SSX (custom automation framework)
- Manual + regression test suites
- Process Direct
- Customer First
- Mainframe for ISIS component replication
- SAP GUI
