Customer Case StudySpiraTest and Rapise helped a Canadian utility streamline the testing and release of more than 100 applications with a standardized QA process and increasing automation.
This privately owned Nova Scotia electric utility serves about 500,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers. It primarily tests third-party commercial software, with roughly 95% of testing performed as user acceptance testing.
There are typically 10–15 testing projects happening simultaneously, ranging from new products to upgrades of core systems such as Maximo.
The company lacked a standard testing process. Each project used its own approach, often determined by the external vendor, and vendor system-test quality and evidence were inconsistent.
Before SpiraTest, Excel spreadsheets managed test cases, test results, and defects, while Word documents stored requirements with limited traceability.
The company used a CMMI DAR matrix to rank solutions against 15 desired features, weighted 80% on features and 20% on cost. SpiraTest achieved the highest weighted feature score, with rich functionality and ease of use as key differentiators.
Once the QA process was established, the company steadily added automated testing with Rapise. Approximately 25% of the application portfolio uses Rapise for automation, focusing on longer-lived systems where automation delivers the highest return.
All applications are now independently tested by QA prior to release.
Existing test cases can be reused for large financial systems.
Projects follow one process regardless of technology or vendor.
MS Office documents were replaced with a central test repository.
Automated test results are visible in the same place as manual testing.
Pre-built integrations brought in other testing tools, including JMeter for load testing.
Since we implemented SpiraTest, not a single project goes live without going through the QA process. This could never have happened before, with our manual process.Quality Assurance Lead
SpiraTest was easy to implement within the new QA process and could adapt to the company’s preferred approach rather than forcing the process to fit the tool. Frequent updates and strong Inflectra support helped sustain adoption.
The company adopted Inflectra-hosted SpiraTest as a SaaS solution on AWS. The deployment uses EC2, EBS, and AWS Lifecycle Manager, with separate Canadian regions in Montreal and Calgary to provide performance and fault tolerance while meeting data residency requirements. After several years with SpiraTest, the company upgraded to SpiraPlan for additional planning and program/portfolio management.
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