The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in the United Kingdom is the official Government agency responsible for intellectual property (IP) rights, including patents, designs, trademarks, and copyright. Its main function is to maintain and enforce a clear and accessible intellectual property system that helps people get the right type of protection for their creation or invention.
The IPO’s team of approximately 1,600, split between offices in Newport and London, is made up of specialists in rights-granting, IT, finance, and HR. Like many Government departments and agencies, a robust and secure digital experience plays a big role in their day-to-day operation.
For patent documentation, the IPO is certified to BS 10008, the British standard that outlines best practice for the implementation and operation of electronic information management systems, including the storage and transfer of information. Testing and quality assurance played a big role in achieving and maintaining this certification, and the agency also wants to gain the BS 10008 standard for its trademarks and designs.
The IPO’s original Test Maturity Model integration (TMMi) Level 3 certification was coming up for renewal and, having experienced the benefits of TMMi, it wanted to uplift its maturity level and be certified at TMMi Level 4. To do so, the IPO needed a trusted quality expert to check their existing process were still working well, and prepare them for the requirements of Level 4. Since the agency already had experience with TMMi, a framework which looks at software testing at different maturity levels, IPO’s Head of Profession for Test, Fraser Daviss, was keen to realise additional benefits from it.
"Having a soon-to-expire TMMi Level 3 certification and embarking on a major project, it was important for our organisation and, more importantly, our software delivery colleagues to review and implement test improvement opportunities to a recognised standard,” he says. “Although we knew some of these had slipped due to a variety of reasons, we weren’t sure of which and to what extent."
"We were also keen to make further improvements, which would provide benefits to wider project goals, such as the product quality evaluation. Although our toolset provides a myriad of data and metrics, were we really maximising their use by understanding what we were really looking for or why? And were we missing some fundamentals which often are the first to be overlooked?”