Covid-19 Response Update from TTC NZ - March 23rd

We are living in interesting times. I'm telling my children that the events of today will be those that their children will study in history classes, and that they as adults will learn from should a similar situation ever arise again. Now is the time for us as a community to look after one another, to focus on continuing to deliver to the highest possible standard, and work together to keep the economy moving.

As our client's own teams move to remote working we are supporting them with initiatives including:

• Remote testing and test automation. For many clients, managing complex testing practices such as User Acceptance Testing, Business Acceptance Testing System Integration Testing and Smoke Testing can be hard enough without the complication of managing this across a remote workforce. TTC is offering a remote testing / test management / recorded exploratory testing / test automation service that is taking much of the complexity from these testing practices and delivering an outcome. With our global footprint we have extensive remote work experience and can assist you with making this transition.
• Business process automation at a tactical (worker) level. For many organisations, implementation of Robotic Process Automation is an enterprise-level programme with outcomes and benefits taking months to achieve, and a lot of ongoing dollars to support. Managing manual processes across a remote workforce can get time consuming and error-prone. As client staff move to a 'work from home' model, TTC is working with them to automate worker-level repeating manual processes to free staff from these time consuming activities and enable them to focus on other higher value work that will require more focus in a remote workforce environment.
• Application performance. Our clients are asking us to benchmark application performance for their user community as they both shift systems from on-prem to the cloud, and as their own workforce moves to access internal applications from outside the organisation in a ‘work from home’ model. This benchmarking is designed to be quick and simple, as well as identifying both the actual bottlenecks in the environment and forecast likely performance issues.
• Security testing. With organisations planning to work from home due to the coronavirus be advised that spy agencies are beginning to warn companies of a possible cyberattack surge. TTC have partnered with industry leading security testing practitioners to offer a range of security testing services, which can be provided remotely across Infrastructure (Network Devices, Appliances, Wireless, Servers etc) including on prem/cloud. Mobile applications and web/thick client applications including middleware and micro services.

One of our key partners, Tricentis, is also moving to support clients remotely. They have announced a Remote Pilot / Proof of Concept package that will enable client initiatives to proceed in this new way of working.If you are keen to know more about these initiatives we can discuss over a video conference, while drinking coffee.... Let me know and we can set one up.

As of Monday 23rd March 2020, TTC NZ have instructed all staff to work from home unless specifically requested by TTC clients with TTC management approval. In making this decision we have implemented a number of initiatives to ensure the physical and mental well-being of our staff as well as assure clients that productivity levels will be maintained. These initiatives include:

• Daily video conference check in to cover the same interactions that would happen as staff acknowledge each other in the mornings and evenings. An opportunity to say hi, bye and quickly chat about the plans or events of the day.
• Utilizing Microsoft Teams and Slack channels for people to communicate on both a professional and social level, to maintain the TTC culture and values.
• Asking our staff to record client project time daily, inclusive of notes on what has been achieved for the day. This time recording and project notes will be made available to clients that want them on a weekly basis so that they are informed our our staff activities and are assured of both focus and productivity.

We are also reminding our customers that we offer Fixed Price deliverable based work engagements to manage any concerns on project uncertainty that our clients may face.

TTC's expectation is that these interesting times will continue for a period yet. We have a clear focus on looking after our clients, our team of employees and the people that we work with on a day to day basis in our client teams. Our firm belief is that we need to first and foremost focus on the health and safety of our staff, customers and community, which will in turn ensure our ability to deliver the results that our customers expect from us.

We are keen to share our experiences and learn from those in our community. Let me know how your own pandemic response measures are going and if we can share those with our community.