About the Project

The sanctions team consist of 4 different streams to carry out testing process for the different
aspects in the GSM tool. The four different streams are CLS (Client List Screening), Onboards,
SSU (Sanctions Service Utility) and BAU (Business As Usual).

They test upon the different functionalities in the GSM tool.

 CLS – It deals with the testing of functionalities related to the information related to
customer, i.e., Client Name, Address, Account Number, etc.
 Onboards- It deals with testing of any new feature or enhancement done in the GSM
tool.
 SSU- It does testing for the functionalities which are related to the “enquiry” feature after
the transaction is raised for enquiry to compliance.
 BAU – It consists of two parts CSU (Client Screening Unit) and GSC (Global Sanctions
Compliance). It does testing for the information related to a client’s transaction details.

All the four streams are meant to do testing but for different functions within a single tool. And
the process of testing followed by all the four are different.

Therefor the need of this project aroused due to the variations in testing process as the
management wanted to come across a standard process for testing for all streams. A “Future
Standard Testing Model” has been proposed by management to have a standard testing process
across UAT.

Future Standard Testing Model as proposed by management:

1. Requirement – Here what is the requirement by the product owner is discussed with Tech
and Developers.

2. Test Strategy – Here the scope of testing, approach to be used, work allocation and other
details are discussed between concerned parties. Test Plan is also developed.

3. Test Cases – According to the scenarios that can take place in a particular requirement,
test cases are developed which will be further used for testing process.

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4. Cross Impacted Application – Since the testing is done on the requirement given by
product owner, therefor there are multiple parties getting affected due to change in one
function. There are many upstream and downstream applications getting affected due to
any enhancement. So they are kept in loop while any testing is done.

5. Test Support Request – Here if there is any need for support request from any upstream
or downstream application than a request is raised to the stakeholders and they provide
with the required support.

6. Test Data Preparation – To carry on testing a lot of transactions are needed in order to
test them which are not available with the team. So a Test Data Preparation is made and
sent to the stakeholders and all the partner applications to receive the transactions in
advance.

7. Tech Handover to UAT – After coding is done, Tech team gives a walkthrough to the
testing team and other stakeholders and from here testing is carried on by the team.

8. Execution Plan & Reporting – It consist of how the testing has been executed and then
the status report is sent to the stakeholders informing about the current status of the
testing going on.

9. Defect Management – Many a times even after testing is completed there are a few
defects due to which we cannot derive the exact result that was expected after making
desirable changes. So there is a complete defect management process that is followed to
close the defect.

10. Operational Change Readiness – At the end an overall functional testing is performed to
recheck if the requirement is completed as asked by the product owner and there is no
more defect left.

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Objective of the Project

The objective of the project is to build a standard process across the four streams to reduce or
remove the variations in the process adopted for testing by each stream. The new testing process
should follow all the 10 steps mentioned above under the “Future Standard Testing Model”.
Sanctions UAT is already a well-established team and the current testing process followed by
each stream is very close to Future Standard Testing Model. The only thing which was needed to
be worked upon was the way the process was followed by each stream. As they were all different
and a few streams also skipped a few stages.

Methodology

The first and foremost important thing in streamlining the process was to know the process
followed by each stream and how they work. This will help me in understanding the importance
and impact of each and every step. This will further help in drawing insights about how to
standardize the testing process for all the streams without having much impact on the individual
need and requirements of the streams, as they all work on different functionalities of a single
tool.

Data Collection

Most important and reliable source for data collection were my team members. As the
knowledge about process cannot be gained just by reading documents. They made me familiar
with the tool and the features of each and every functionalities in the tool and provided me the
access which helped me to understand the process well and the importance of every step that was
previously followed by the team and what impact each step had on the ongoing testing process.

The team allocated time to train me on the tool and made me understand the difference in the
testing process followed by CLS, BAU, Onboards & SSU.

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A lot of online trainings were also assigned as a part of knowledge gathering session to
understand the criticality and various terms used in testing.

Data was also collected from various internal team documents which were made for training
purposes. They briefed me about the different types of testing and the particular testing used
within sanctions team (testing done for the payments on the GSM tool).

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Result

To standardize the process of testing in an already mature team was a tough task to come across.
But with the help and guidance of the team members we reached close to the “Future Standard
Testing Model” as identified by the management.
To reach this, we identified a few areas of improvement working on which we can bring down
the variations in the testing approach to minimum and follow the same approach of testing
consisting of those ten steps identified in the “Future Standard Testing Model”.

 AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT
Agile methodology is adopted where individual streams are owned by different Scrum
teams (Tech) which leads to a variance in the process followed across individual streams.
The variance can be minimized by improving the following mentioned areas:

 Reporting Process – With Agile, reporting process is inconsistent across streams

and minor enhancements are not captured in the status reports sent to
stakeholders. For example, the report of enhancements in SSU is updated on daily
basis in sharepoint, by Onboards on weekly basis through client calls and written
report over mails, but for BAU & CLS only the major enhancements are reported
over call and the minor enhancements are not even reported.
 Data Management – Test Data Requirement needed for the execution of test
cases which consist of all the transactions that are required to be tested is prepared
by the teams on an ongoing basis. These transactions are extracted from other
software. Therefor there is always risk to test completion in the event of any
environmental issues which is quite frequent due to heavy traffic on the software
as they are used by all the parties.
 Automation Usage –Support from other Lines Of Business (LOB) for the Test
data Requirement in Onboards testing spans across days with fewer transactions
received at any point. The time taken to automate a single transaction for testing
is the same as it will take to automate multiple test cases. There are total 108 test

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 cases in an Onboards testing. If only fewer transactions are received daily it will
reduce the efficiency of automation leading to its limited use.

To achieve the desired objective, the above mentioned areas of improvement needs to be worked
upon. Following are the recommendations which will lead to a better and standard process.

 RECOMMENDATIONS
Standardization will ensure a single process followed across the four streams making it
easier to coordinate between the streams and other teams as well. How to make process
standard are mentioned in the recommendations mentioned below:
 - Incorporating a standard reporting process across sanctions which will reduce
inconsistencies. This can be done by mandating a standard reporting method
adopted by all the streams for minor as well as major enhancements.
 - Mandatory Test Data Preparation should be incorporated to avoid any impact on
the execution and delivery dates. This Test Data Requirement should include all
the requirements necessary for the execution of a testing from beginning to end in
a flow.
 - Better engagement and exchange of information with other LOB’s will help in
receiving transactions in bulk for an E2E Onboards testing. Which will increase
the efficiency of automation by making it more useful for the team and help in
reducing the testing cycle time.

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SUMMARY

Standardization means reduction of variabilities in a process. This can increase the efficiency of
work, give us a better workflow and lesser confusion which will reduce the cycle time. Here also
it’s the same. Standardization across the streams in sanctions will be very beneficial for the team
in many ways. The benefits of standardization are mentioned below:

 A standard process will in turn streamline the training process. Now there will be no need
to train individuals working in SSU, Onboards, CLS & BAU according their testing
process. This will bring down the training efforts to one-fourth.
 The movement of resources across streams will become easier.
 Standard reporting will help in highlighting the risks related to the execution and delivery
time of a testing process at an early stage to the stakeholders. This is done by
communicating the daily status report consisting of the number of test cases executed and
the challenges faced during the testing process.
 A total of 38 LOB’s are aligned to Sanctions. With a standard process across the streams,
we can easily align our work to them. It will also reduce confusion from their part related
to the requirements for testing at every stage. As earlier it used to be different for
different streams, but standardization will make it same for all.

This will not only benefit the Sanctions team, but also the management in terms of cost reduction
when it comes to training the employees and a more efficient process increasing the count of test
execution per day which will eventually lead to increase the accuracy of work done.

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WAY FOREWARD

The standard process for testing which can be used across the streams, i.e., SSU, CLS, BAU &
Onboards, with all the pros and cons of adopting the streamlined process has been proposed to
the senior management. They are planning to run a check for 2 weeks with the proposed standard
process and test the feasibility of plan working upon the areas of improvement mentioned above.
Based on the run test result and the hands on of the process by the team a standard process will
be finally incorporated in the team.

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GLOSSARY

Test Case – A test case is defined as a set of actions executed to verify a particular
feature or functionality of the software application. A test case is an indispensable
component of the Software Testing Lifecycle that helps to validate the Application under
Test.

Test Scenario – A Test Scenario is defined as many functionality that can be tested. It is
also called test.

Agile – It is a practice that helps continuous iteration of development and testing in the
Software Development Lifecycle process. Agile breaks the product into smaller builds.
Here development and testing activities go hand in hand.

JIRA – It is a tool developed by Australian Company Atlassian. It is used for bug

tracking, issue tracking & project management. The name JIRA is actually inherited
from the Japanese word “Gojira” which means “Godzilla”.

Sprint – It is a set period of time to complete the user stories, decided by the product
owner and developer team, usually 2-4 weeks of time.

Scrum – It is an agile development framework for managing product development. It is

flexible and holistic product development approach. In this methodology, development
and Quality Assurance team work as one unit.

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REFERENCES

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/our-history.htm

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/about-us.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPMorgan_Chase

https://www.guru99.com/software-testing-introduction-importance.html

https://www.guru99.com/v-model-software-testing.html

https://www.guru99.com/software-testing-life-cycle.html

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