“Everyone Has Their Own Way of Working”

Region Uppsala faces several challenges in ensuring high quality in their IT projects. The organization, which collaborates with IT to manage these projects, has limited time outside of its primary responsibilities—like all regions. In addition, there is a lack of expertise in quality assurance and a standardized process. Sara Johansson, IT Object Manager and Test Manager at Akademiska Hospital, explains:

“Historically, IT has been involved far too late in projects and rarely had a requirements specification to work from. The organization has been using Excel, and everyone has their own way of working. Since resources are often replaced during the project, it becomes chaotic and inefficient. It’s easy to lose control of quality, giving vendors too much influence. In the end, IT projects become unnecessarily expensive, and the systems don’t function as intended.”

Decision to Start with a Pilot Project

When a new laboratory system was to be implemented at Akademiska Hospital, Sara’s project team realized the need for a standardized way of working to increase efficiency and the quality of IT projects. The question was brought up to the management level, where a decision was made to use the laboratory system as a pilot project to establish a structure for requirements and testing. Once the foundation is in place, the plan is to apply the template and lessons learned to other projects within the region.

“We’re following a three-phase approach, starting with an initial implementation project at Akademiska Lab, then expanding to Akademiska Hospital, and finally rolling it out across Region Uppsala. Our goal is to create a documented and usable foundation for requirements and testing to reduce dependency on specific individuals and improve internal control over our implementation and maintenance projects.”

To build structural capital and retain knowledge within the organization, a central tool is also necessary. For Sara, it was an obvious choice to use Reqtest, which has been used for testing in the region for over 10 years, for both the pilot project and future implementations.

“As a test manager, Reqtest gives me a clear overview of the requirements and what needs to be tested, while also being user friendly for the organization. Additionally, it simplifies standardizing the work. For example, a team within the IT department has developed a general IT requirements template to be used in all procurements. By integrating the template into Reqtest, we can easily clone it for the pilot project and continue refining the requirements.”

Clear Structure Increases Control

The laboratory system, which was procured in 2024, is now in the middle of its implementation phase. The initial process has been delayed due to the extensive configurations and a comprehensive requirements specification, but this investment will pay off in the long term.

“The next project will move faster. It takes time to get everything right the first time, as it should be. This time, we involved the right resources from the start: a project manager, technical project manager, requirements analyst, test manager, and key personnel from the operations team. We ensured that the requirements specification was of high quality and that the requirements were testable. Initially, we created an overly detailed requirements structure, which we later simplified to focus on the basics.”

For Sara, the structure and control she gains over requirements and testing in Reqtest are invaluable, especially when preparing decision materials for a steering group.

“Our resources are limited, and the organization’s primary work is always comes first. Therefore, we need to make project decisions based on the right information and prioritize what needs to be done.”

Maintenance and Future Projects

The next step in the project is to install the system’s basic configuration. Following this, the team will focus on integrations, testing, and training. When the system goes live, the requirements and tests documented in Reqtest can be reused during maintenance to continuously manage future changes to the system.

“The current focus is on the pilot project and making the laboratory system as effective as possible. Later, during the maintenance phase, it will be much easier to manage requirements and perform quality tests because a large part of the work has already been completed.”