Meet the IRP Student Team – Quality Assurance

The Integrated Renewal Program – Student (IRP Student) refers to the renewal of the UBC Student Information System (SIS) that the University is undertaking. The renewed system will support UBC students in achieving their academic goals and create a better experience for all users through a new set of tools and new ways of working.   

IRP Student has eight core teams – Student Solution, Ecosystem Delivery, Transformation & Change Management, Security, Access, Data and Reporting, Technical Delivery, Solution Architecture, Quality Assurance, and Program Management Office. This series aims to explain each team, their objectives, and their role within the IRP Student program in terms you, our UBC community, will understand. 

Guided by the philosophy that quality is the key to excellence, the IRP Student Quality Assurance (QA) team provides quality assurance and testing services across all domains within the IRP Student project.

 The QA team will review design requirements, provide early feedback, and devise an effective, iterative testing approach to ensure quality for the system. Maintaining quality is the responsibility of all stakeholders and testing is a shared effort involving QAs, Business Analysts, Subject Matter Experts, Developers, Business Users, and the community. In this manner, a desired level of quality is preserved through each stage of the IRP Student program.  

“Ensuring a high-quality student system for the UBC community is our top priority.  We design and execute tests to give confidence in the system.”  

- Donia Cheok, Senior Manager - Quality Assurance

The QA team has several key responsibilities related to system testing which include:  

Testing Standard and Strategy: This involves the creation of specific strategies and plans to support testing of the new system. The determination of testing methodology and tools is also in scope, along with frameworks and standards for test automation, testing that is conducted through software and minimal human interference.  

Test Preparation and Testing: This involves the allocation of QA resources and the review of team requirements and design. The QA team collaborates with the Student Solution team to create and execute tests as required.  

Tracking and Assessment: Here test statuses are tracked and relevant metrics are provided to inform the overall quality assessment of the system.

For more information about IRP Student teams, read the other entries in this content series on the IRP Student website.   

*Reflecting on our experience so far in working with Workday and seeing how our design is shaping up, we realize that we have to embrace change and be confident in our ability to adapt. Workday Student, along with IRP Student’s functional requirements, are evolving quickly and this could mean that we may have to adapt our approach throughout the project timeline.