Agile scaling for Continuous Delivery

Increasing the speed of delivering new features and the quality of Thomas Cook Online. Thomas Cook have, at Group level an online solution called :DLite.
This platform is delivered using an Agile approach and Ciklum was engaged to support its ongoing development by providing robust quality assurance (QA) services – QA Audit and QA Management.

Thomas Cook Group plc is one of the world’s leading leisure travel groups, with sales of £9 billion in the year ended 30 September 2017.
Thomas Cook set up a new ‘Digital Business’ which defined a new digital strategy. At the heart of the strategy is :DLite, its integrated digital platform.

The initial ramp-up of the :DLite programme was challenging. In the early stages of mobilisation the teams suffered cross-coordination issues and maintaining a high level of quality also proved difficult. Product releases were delayed, critical bugs leaked to production and the time taken to fix bugs, on occasion, exceeded business expectations.

Thomas Cook asked Ciklum QA and Development Audit services to help identify root causes and to recommend actions and solutions that would ensure bug-free new builds released into production at the end of each sprint.

Based on the results of the audit, the Ciklum QA Team, together with the Thomas Cook :DLite management team, built a resolution map. Senior Ciklum QA Consultants started to manage the :DLite QA team to change existing processes and deliver improvements. As a result, Thomas Cook team was able to optimize the overall development and QA approaches.

• Release processes adjusted to roll out bi-weekly releases with regular product delivery, allowing timely reactions to changes in business needs
• Automation and Continuous Delivery (CD) approaches implemented. The release pipeline became compatible with CD and DevOps best practices were introduced
• Test Automation coverage increased up to 90% for Desktop and up to 50% for Mobile platforms