For more than 25 years, Sistema de Información Universitaria - SIU - has been developing solutions for the digital management of the Argentine university system and various government agencies.
This ecosystem of solutions integrates all management areas within an institution (administrative, financial, academic, human resources, purchasing and assets, data analysis), optimizing process management, data quality, transparency, and decision-making.
One of the main pillars of SIU is its collaborative network based on communities of practice. In these communities, users interact, exchange knowledge and best practices, solve common challenges, and share experiences. This governance model has gained national and international recognition and has enabled successful implementations in over 140 institutions.
The Kiwi TCMS experience
In recent years, digital transformation and the evolution of the institution have led SIU to move from a structure based on specific solutions to integrated project management, requiring the search for new tools to streamline and improve software development. As part of this process, a test management system was evaluated.
This experience began with the Integrated Electronic File solution, a tool designed to seamlessly manage documents and files within an institution. One of its components, SUDOCU (Unique Document System), was developed by Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento - UNGS - and made available to the Argentine university system through SIU. This feature added complexity for the QA team during their work, as test cases had to be replicated on different platforms both on the SIU and UNGS sides.
In order to simplify processes and avoid duplicated efforts, a tool was sought to streamline the workflow. After evaluating several options, Kiwi TCMS was selected because of its open source nature, which is in line with SIU's policy.
Evaluation began with a local installation, testing its functionalities, and optimizing its use to improve workflow. After adjustments in both test and production environments, Kiwi TCMS was incorporated into SUDOCU's projects, creating test cases and test plans. This improved the organization and visibility of testing activities for the entire team involved, including QAs, developers, and analysts.
Based on this initial implementation, a work plan was created to gradually integrate testing of more projects into Kiwi TCMS, taking into account the unique characteristics of the SIU ecosystem.
Currently, a consolidated QA team has been established within SIU, working in a fully integrated manner. Other projects are now using Kiwi TCMS in their daily operations for functional testing, system integration, regression testing and smoke testing.
Impact and benefits
The experience with Kiwi TCMS has enhanced the quality of software developed by SIU by centralizing test cases, test plans and test executions. This has improved both the traceability and transparency of QA work. It also provided the ability to generate reports and metrics to further evaluate and improve internal processes.
One of the key benefits for SIU is time optimization achieved by reusing test cases and test plans, as well as the ability to track an unlimited number of executions, within the same test management tool. In addition, Kiwi TCMS' integration with Gitlab and Redmine is very useful for the institution, as these are other tools commonly used within SIU.
The flexibility of this system allows test cases to be extended as needed, making it easier to adjust and update test cases or test plans in response to the development cycle.
In the words of Lucas del Reguero Martinez, QA tester:
The implementation of Kiwi TCMS has provided significant advantages to the institution, resulting in tangible benefits to users within the SIU community. The plan for the future is to continue training teams on the tool to further democratize its use.
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