Gina Tricot, with 150 stores and a significant online presence, is in the midst of a digital transformation. Therefore, in 2022, the fashion chain decided to strengthen its internal IT and project department. Until then, Gina Tricot had relied on external consultants and hired test leaders for larger projects. When the IT management realized the need to take a comprehensive approach to quality assurance, they hired Christoffer Lukasz, who brought extensive experience from companies like H&M and VGR, as a QA/Test Lead.

– In today’s competitive landscape, we can’t afford to deliver projects with errors and bugs. If our website is down, we lose money, and our customers become dissatisfied. That’s why we need to test everything before it goes live to ensure quality in our systems, he says.

Start with the purpose and don’t forget the organization

Christoffer Lukasz’s quality assurance process is simple and straightforward: ensure that everyone understands the purpose of testing, think about testing early in the process, plan for the testing phase, involve the business, and use a testing tool that is easy for everyone to use.

– Everything we do is for the customer. If everyone understands that the purpose of our tests is to serve the customer, it’s much easier for me to secure resources. Having the entire organization on board is crucial for a successful outcome. Furthermore, it saves money because the earlier in a project we find bugs, the cheaper it is to fix them, he explains.

But it’s not enough for everyone in the organization to understand the purpose; the organization, which “holds the knowledge,” must also be involved in the process from the beginning. This includes specifying functionality requirements and testing to ensure it functions as intended. The simplicity of using Reqtest has been helpful to achieve this.

– With the help of Reqtest, we have created a seamless workflow where it’s effortless for product owners to enter requirements and equally easy for the business to test and report deviations. Additionally, we’ve integrated Reqtest with Jira so that error reports automatically reach our developers. This has significantly expedited bug resolution and shortened the time to Go-Live.

Lower costs and an enhanced customer experience

Christoffer Lukasz and his team have been working based on the new process for a year and a half. Even though it’s an ongoing effort, he says that Gina Tricot now has a more modern approach to quality assurance, the organization operates as a team, and there is no longer an “us versus them” mentality between IT and the business.

– It took a couple of months to get everyone on board, but now both IT and the business understand the benefits of structured quality assurance. Thanks to it, we deliver high quality in our projects and have significantly fewer issues in our systems. This, in turn, reduces Gina Tricot’s digitalization costs and creates an even better customer experience that helps us achieve our goals.