A minimum viable product (MVP) was scoped for a trial. The customer project was then built in six months by a dedicated in-house and cross enterprise team.
Agile methodologies were used to enable iterative development and ongoing testing of the project. This approach would make the most of resources for the ambitious six-month development schedule. The customer project is comprised of several new and interconnecting technologies. We were responsible for their end-to-end test planning, management, and delivery.
A geospatial situational awareness tool was developed to pull data from multiple systems and then display it geospatially. With the help of sophisticated pipe tracing functionality, the utility’s staff have access to a unified, real-time view of customer issues, as well as the ability for customer impact assessments to be carried out for each issue.
We carried out functional testing on this tool to validate its dashboard and all accompanying functionality. Integration testing was also done to ensure that it was correctly and reliably accessing information from the 10+ systems it was integrated with.
Performance testing ensured there were no data bottlenecks at all the integration points. This ensured that the tool would run quickly for call centre staff while talking with a customer.
One challenging aspect of testing the internally-run system was its integration with external Cloud-based services from Google and Microsoft. This meant security measures such as firewalls and shared Internet traffic had to be considered during performance testing.
A new customer notification system was developed to proactively notify customers of work that may affect them. Its primary function is to send out advance notifications via SMS and/or email about water outages.
We carried out user experience (UX) testing on the message templates and notifications to ensure they worked correctly for staff who created the messages, and customers who viewed them. Integration testing was done between Whispir and the geospatial tool, Maximo, and the customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Since there was no effective way for this tool to cross-communicate with Whispir and the CRM, we specifically created an API that enabled this integration.
Customer satisfaction would be measured with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) and be used to trigger real-time service recovery of any negative customer experiences. We tested all the integration points between the new customer notification system and the CRM so they worked correctly and without bottlenecks.
New Internet-enabled channels for reporting leaks in public spaces were developed to provide customers with more choice of escalation and feedback points, as well as reduce the number of calls to the contact centre. Customers also have the option to view current water outages and register to receive alerts.
Functional and integration testing was done to ensure that the forms and alerts worked correctly, and that the information captured from these forms was correctly stored in the CRM. UX and compatibility testing was carried out to ensure that the new channels worked correctly across all popular web browsers and devices.
The creation of the customer-centric experience was an opportunity for the water utility to test pilot the Internet of Things (IoT) for lowcost monitoring of its non-critical yet important assets. 190 Internet connected sensors were installed in one wastewater catchment area to measure asset performance and identify any issues before they affect customers and/or create any environmental impact.
Functionality and performance testing of the IoT setup was done based on use cases provided to us. We ensured that the three types of sensors used in the pilot transmitted the correct data to Micosoft Azure and PowerBI before it was brought into the geospatial situational awareness tool for monitoring and creating alerts.