Integration and testing of Sonata
The client: Scottish Friendly
Scottish Friendly (SFA) is a leading financial services organisation offering a wide range of products, including ISAs, Junior ISAs, pensions, and insurance. Serving a growing customer base, SFA relies on its wealth management platform, Sonata, to manage its entire business operations.
The platform supports key functions across marketing, finance, actuarial services, investment management, financial compliance, and product development. To stay competitive and improve operational efficiency, SFA have embarked on a number of major change programmes including a major Sonata upgrade from Version 7.12 to Version 12.0, a transition critical to providing improved security, resilience and support as well as enabling future innovation.
Sonata platform upgrade
Scottish Friendly faced the challenge of upgrading their wealth management platform, Sonata, from version 7 to version 12, a significant leap that presented multiple complexities. Sonata, provided by Bravura, had not been upgraded for 5 years and in that time SFA had onboarded significant new client business.
With Sonata at the core of SFA's operations, used by every team from finance to investment management, a successful upgrade was critical to avoid disruption and ensure there was no impact on the user experience of SFA’s customers. While there were no immediate financial benefits from the upgrade, it was seen as a crucial enabler for future business improvements, providing a stable platform for growth and innovation.
QA maturity assessment, improvement plan and test strategy
Scottish Friendly engaged with us as QA experts to assess SFA’s quality practices in terms of their capabilities and maturity of QA processes. This was carried out using a 2-stage approach involving a comprehensive QA Maturity Assessment and Improvement Plan covering People, Process, Technology followed by the creation of an Enterprise-wide Test Strategy that was adopted and rolled out across SFA’s portfolio of projects, including the Sonata upgrade.
A major part of the improvement plan was to ensure that the SFA Test team had the QA foundation knowledge to support the test strategy. This involved a series of QA workshops and one-to-one mentoring sessions led by Answer Practitioners enabling team members to acquire the ISTQB professional testing certification.
Critical success factors
Key to the success of the upgrade were several critical success factors:
01
Environment Management: A detailed environment plan was created to support the complex testing agenda, including scenarios like customer correspondence and time travel/inflight testing.
02
Issue Resolution: A structured process for identifying, triaging, and resolving issues was put in place, with daily calls and fortnightly reviews ensuring fast resolution.
03
Project Assurance: Altus, a third-party assurance provider, was brought in to provide independent oversight of the upgrade process, offering recommendations to the SFA board and rubber-stamping Answer Digital’s work to be effective.
04
Business Readiness: Four dress rehearsals were conducted with SFA’s business teams, ensuring a smooth implementation and strong confidence across the organisation.
05
Documentation & Knowledge Transfer: The project emphasised thorough documentation of the upgrade process, creating valuable artefacts to support future changes and reduce resource dependency.
06
Stakeholder Engagement: Ongoing communication with key stakeholders across SFA ensured that everyone was aligned and actively participating in the project.
07
Bravura Partnership: Close collaboration with Bravura ensured that the upgrade benefited from their expertise and that any issues with Sonata were quickly addressed.
Sonata upgrade test strategy
Applying the Enterprise QA Strategy, we designed and implemented a multi-layered Sonata upgrade testing strategy based on industry best practices. Our team implemented a “Sonata Testing Pyramid” which involved a layered approach to testing in which each of the 6 test levels / types builds upon the previous. Each test level defined the depth (detail) of test coverage and a range of roles are involved as we move through the Testing Levels, from low-level component tests to full end-to-end business process testing. This ensured that any issues were isolated and resolved before higher-level testing began, reducing the risk of errors during the critical stages of the project.
Automation and performance testing
To improve efficiency and accuracy, we introduced test automation into the Sonata upgrade process. Using Bruno, an open-source API client, an automated test suite quickly ensured the upgraded API between the SFA customer portal (MyPlans) and Sonata was fully tested in the early phases of the project ensuring that customer experience would not be affected by the upgrade. Performance testing was also introduced to ensure that key customer journeys, such as signing up for an ISA, were not negatively impacted by the upgrade whilst also ensuring core Sonata business processes and functions, required by Customer Services, worked efficiently with no performance degradation.
Business colloboration
Business involvement was key to the success of many of the test strategy phases. The upgrade involved extensive collaboration with SFA’s business teams, requiring them to step out of their day-to-day roles to provide critical insights into how they used Sonata. Workshops were held with business teams to walkthrough and document business critical processes (BCPs) so that a shared understanding of each process was created allowing detailed and accurate test scenarios to be created which validated all upgraded Sonata business processes were tested. Answer Digital used JIRA and Zephyr to manage the project and testing processes, adopting Agile methodologies with two-week sprints and retrospectives to continuously improve ways of working and testing effectiveness.
Project and SteerCo Reporting
We implemented Zephyr, a test management tool that streamlined reporting and improved visibility. Real-time dashboards and test burndown charts tracked testing metrics and progress, showing how many tests had passed or failed, insights into defect status and overall test phase progress. This comprehensive reporting impressed third-party auditors, who praised the transparency and thoroughness of the process.
The result
The upgrade to Sonata version 12 was successfully implemented, with minimal disruption to SFA’s operations. The project delivered several tangible benefits:
01
Enhanced Platform Stability: The successful upgrade provides SFA with a stable version of Sonata, enabling future growth and system enhancements.
02
Improved Testing Capability: The introduction of new testing tools and the upskilling of SFA staff ensure that future changes can be implemented more efficiently.
03
Performance Improvements: Rigorous performance testing ensured that customer experience was not degraded, maintaining high service levels throughout the upgrade process.
04
Automated Testing: The integration of test automation tools reduces manual effort and increases the speed of testing for future updates.
05
Future-Ready: The documented processes, test plans, and business-critical workflows provide a strong foundation for future upgrades and innovations, allowing SFA to operate more efficiently.
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